10 Movies Where You Want The Villain To Win

10. Joker

The Joker has a long and storied cinematic history, with acting heavyweights like Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger taking iconic turns as the clown prince of crime. In 2019 the excellent Joaquin Phoenix stepped up to the plate to give us a Scorsese flavoured take on the iconic villain, in Todd Phillips’ Joker.

After making a name for himself in comedies for nearly twenty years, Phillips examines the troubled clown-for-hire, Arthur Fleck, and what social circumstances lead to a tragic figure such as this becoming the Joker. Arthur’s inevitable, violent implosion occurs after he is unjustly vilified by his fellow comedians, abused by the system meant to be fixing him and generally treated as a second class citizen.

The setting of Joker is a thinly veiled simulacrum of '70s New York, a time of extreme crime levels, social deprivation and violent upheavals. The film forces us to question how we would likely act in the shoes of Fleck, living in such a pressure cooker day-to-day.

Whilst not totally sympathetic - he does brutally murder a few people after all - Phoenix’s performance elevates Fleck’s character into someone recognisably human, worthy of your empathy. The catharsis Fleck feels as he makes his final transformation into the Joker becomes catharsis for the audience who have joined him on this brutal journey.