Quite excellent, really.

But then again, I never really doubted the quality of the film, just the quality of those who ended up worshiping it. Clearly they took the wrong message from it.

What's equally strange to me: the film sympathizes with plenty of liberal concerns and concepts... health care, mental health, public funding for programs, wealth inequality, the poor, corruption of those in power, etc. Hell, Arthur's imaginary girlfriend isn't white -- the "woke" horror!

Yet the fanatics the film has attracted seem to fall on the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Why is that?

Near I can tell, they've ignored ALL of that and are focused solely on "man decides 'fuck you society' and murders all those who did him wrong".

It's like Falling Down. There's folks who only saw that film as a cathartic indictment of how awful society is. Rebelling with violence because "we're not gonna take it anymore".

That's NOT what 'Joker' is. Yet it's fans take a similar message away: "society bad (whatever you think that means), violence is the only answer, here is our new hero". They're not unlike the ones rallying around Fleck at the end of the film. Everything that LED to him being like that is thrown out. It's just marking time to pad the film until you get to the anti-social violence they're jonsing for.

'Joker' is a tragedy. We're not supposed to like him. We're not supposed to cheer for him. We're silent witnesses, like ghosts, watching a horrible descent into unraveling madness.

So yeah. Glad I finally saw it. These assholes almost made me miss out on it. :P