Joker Trailer 2 Review: 9 Ups & 3 Downs
1. The Unfortunate Fight Club Effect
You can almost feel how inevitable the response to this is going to be, but hell, here goes anyway: why are the only two female characters shown (of any note - i.e. who talk or engage with Arthur) both negative figures? One admonishes him, one abandons him. We also see him kissing his neighbour, but she's not even remotely acknowledged as a character and there's no context to it. It's likely that what's happening there is not as it appears too.
In and of itself, this isn't ENTIRELY a problem, because the trailer is merely a reflection of a part of the movie, a slice of its most saleable parts, as it were (though there's an issue with that too, obviously). The real problem comes when you consider that a part of the audience of this film are going to weaponise Arthur Fleck for their own purposes. You can see it already.
Now, this is a wavering point, because it's something that is going to happen partly outside of the film's limits, but it's a conversation we are clearly going to have to have around this movie. Because you can see it trundling over the horizon like an irresistible juggernaut. This film is going to make the Joker an icon... A hero. And that's problematic even if it's taken by viewers in a different way than it's intended.
Just as Fight Club sought to deconstruct ideas of hyper-masculinity, Joker will no doubt talk about those who feel ostracised by society or spurned. The protests in the film might be about "eating the rich" or the persecution of vulnerable people, but there's something in the way the mob use masks that correlates closely with the rise of the alt-right and even if Joker seeks to pull them down covertly (as in the Fight Club method), it's going to give them a hero to champion in Arthur. It all looks dreadfully inevitable.
And feeding into it - even accidentally - by not showing female characters in any sort of positive way is definitely something of an issue. Now go call me an SJW in the comments all you like.
What did you think of the final Joker trailer? Share your reactions below in the comments.