{"id":198473,"date":"2021-02-21T21:00:58","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T21:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gamerant.com\/joker-movie-ripped-off-underrated\/"},"modified":"2021-02-21T21:00:58","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T21:00:58","slug":"joker-completely-ripped-off-this-classic-underrated-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2021\/02\/21\/joker-completely-ripped-off-this-classic-underrated-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Joker’ Completely Ripped Off This Classic Underrated Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When Todd Phillips\u2019 Joker<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0movie first hit the festival circuit, the festival snobs declared it to be an Oscar contender, and possibly the greatest comic book movie ever made. But when it got to the general public,\u00a0who enjoy a steady diet of comic book movies, the response was much more polarized. There was a widespread campaign to boycott the movie over fears that its lead protagonist Arthur Fleck\u2019s crusade\u00a0against the rich could spark real-life incidents of violence. These fears turned out to be unfounded, as moviegoers realized the movie wasn\u2019t as deep as the controversy suggested<\/a> and no such incidents actually took place.<\/p>\n

One of the main criticisms levied at Joker<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(by people who have actually seen it) is that it borrows heavily from existing movies. Phillips pulled together scenes and details and themes from a handful of Scorsese movies like Taxi Driver<\/em> and Raging Bull<\/em> and just replaced Robert De Niro\u2019s brooding antiheroes with the Clown Prince of Crime. While The Killing Joke<\/em> (the Joker\u2019s most widely accepted origin story from the comics) was clearly a big influence on Phillips\u2019 movie, he made it abundantly clear that he wasn\u2019t interested in adapting the source material and instead wanted to offer a wholly original take on the character. But, while Arthur Fleck is original in the context of DC Comics history<\/a>, he\u2019s not original in the context of cinema, because his story has already been told much more effectively by Scorsese.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0David Fincher Has a Lot to Say About Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Although other movies certainly served as inspiration, The King of Comedy<\/em> is the clearest jumping-off point for the Joker<\/em> movie. One of Scorsese\u2019s most underrated works, it\u2019s a dark comedy masterpiece about a dangerously delusional aspiring comedian latching onto a famous talk show host and eventually taking him hostage to hijack his late-night show. Robert De Niro\u2019s performance as Rupert Pupkin, a budding comic who will do everything to become a successful comedian except perform at an open mic night, is one of the best of his career<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Produced at the height of Scorsese and De Niro\u2019s popularity (when they\u2019d become disillusioned with celebrity), The King of Comedy<\/em> is a bitter statement about the emptiness of fame. Rupert wants to skip past the hard work that goes into making it as a comic to enjoy the fleeting stardom that comes with one-in-a-million success. De Niro plays his delusions with such conviction that it\u2019s hard to tell what\u2019s actually real \u2013 and Scorsese leans into the ambiguity<\/a> beautifully. Much like the ending of Joker<\/em> (and the ending of Scorsese and De Niro\u2019s own Taxi Driver<\/em>), the final scene of The King of Comedy<\/em> leaves it to the audience to decide how much of what they just saw was real, and how much of it took place in the protagonist\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

Like Arthur, Rupert lives with his mother. While\u00a0Frances Conroy plays Penny Fleck on-screen in\u00a0Joker<\/em>,\u00a0all of Rupert\u2019s mother\u2019s\u00a0appearances in\u00a0The King of Comedy<\/em> are off-screen. Whenever she appears, she\u2019s yelling at Rupert to keep it down, often interrupting the recording of his material (or his pretend talk show appearances with lifesize cardboard cut-outs of famous people) \u2013 much like Penny, she\u2019s overbearing. The Arthur\/Penny dynamic in Joker<\/em> feels like a sanitized version of the much more memorable mother-son relationship seen in the far superior Joaquin Phoenix thriller You Were Never Really Here<\/em>, directed by the great Lynne Ramsay<\/a>. That movie is less on-the-nose about the specifics of the character\u2019s trauma, but hits much closer to home with the emotions of it.<\/p>\n

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In The King of Comedy<\/em>, Rupert kidnaps a talk show host in order to get one headlining spot to prove his mettle as a comic before gladly turning himself in to the authorities. In Joker<\/em>, Arthur is invited onto a talk show after going viral (in 1981), then kills the host on the air. In both cases, the deranged aspiring comic commits a crime on live TV. Phillips even draws attention to the parallel by casting Robert De Niro<\/a> as the talk show host. Murray Franklin is a lot more overtly obnoxious than The King of Comedy<\/em>\u2019s Jerry Langford, but the sentiment is the same. Both Rupert and Arthur are the little guy trying to get their foot on the ladder, and they\u2019re incensed by seasoned pros Jerry and Murray looking down on them from the top.<\/p>\n

The greatest tragedy of Joker<\/em> ripping off The King of Comedy<\/em> is that, even after Joker<\/em> grossed over $1 billion\u00a0with a watered-down version of it, it\u2019s still underrated. It would be one thing if Joker<\/em>\u2019s success had led to The King of Comedy<\/em> being brought into the mainstream four decades too late, but it remains one of Scorsese\u2019s underappreciated gems<\/a> alongside Bringing Out the Dead<\/em> and Silence<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The themes of The King of Comedy<\/em> ring even truer today than they did in 1982. Back in 1982, Rupert\u2019s fame-driven mindset only applied to people who actively sought to be the next big movie star or a global pop sensation. Today, it applies to everyone posting their lives on social media<\/a>. Social media has\u00a0drawn millions of people into Rupert Pupkin\u2019s relentless pursuit of attention and recognition. Not everyone is driven to a life of crime in their quest for likes, but the movie\u2019s message about celebrity worship and the futility of chasing fame still holds up.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Zack Snyder\u2019s Justice League: Why The Joker Meme Is Actually Very Important<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n

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Todd Phillips\u2019 standalone DC entry borrowed a lot from Martin Scorsese’s filmography, but it emulated one underrated gem in particular.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"'Joker' Completely Ripped Off This Classic Underrated Movie - ITTeacherITFreelance.hk","description":"Todd Phillips\u2019 standalone DC entry borrowed a lot from Martin Scorsese's filmography, but it emulated one underrated gem in particular."},"footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198474,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198473\/revisions\/198474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}