The new Joker movie is getting a lot of controversy about it's possible messages... but what sort of legacy will the movie have on the future of cinema? I think it's something altogether unrelated to the message or quality of the film itself.

Last week I went to see Todd Phillips Joker and it was... pretty good. I thought the cinematography and editing were pretty good, the score was fantastic, and Phoenix was excellent in the role, but the writing, dialogue in particular, was a bit weak at times. I wasn't a fan of the direction it went towards the end, I was struggling to imagine this guy becoming anything resembling the Joker of the comics but as a standalone it was pretty good. But that's not what I wanted to talk about. More than whether I think it's good, what's important is that other people think it's good, and they do, it's got a 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and as of my recording this has his 737 million at the box office already, on it's way to becoming the highest earning R-rated movie of all time, and what I want to talk about today is what I think this could mean for popular cinema going forward, because I think Joker sits in a pretty unique position, and, hopefully, might be a sign of things to come.

The cinema landscape today is quite different now to how it has been at any point in history. The internet has been flooded lately with celebrities criticizing, and sometimes defending, Marvel movies. This started with Martin Scorsese complaining that Marvel movies are more like theme park rides than real cinema, leading to plenty of hilarious memes on the subject. Ignoring the semantics of the definition of cinema and focusing on the pragmatics of his argument, I think the point being made here, about Marvel movies but also our blockbuster situation more generally, is that the kinds of movies that dominate our culture today are products first, stories second. The development starts with a recognized property, character, brand or actor, and then build a story around it to cater to people's infatuation with this existing thing, rather than the idea and the storytelling potential being the catalyst for a brand to be built around. And since the idea is to be marketable to as many people as humanly possible, studios are trying to be as safe as possible, telling the most conventional stories they can, avoiding anything against the grain or challenging to a viewer, anything too divergent from the norm, lest someone be put off by anything they see. This is particularly true in the international market, where films do better for catering to the whims of everyone, and especially the powerhouse market of China, and avoiding anything to idiosyncratic or complex, that might not translate well.

This isn't exactly something new, studios have always capitalized on nostalgia and brand recognotion to drive sales of media, movies have always been a commercial product for the studios. But I don't think it's ever quite been to the extent it is now, and I think the international market is a big part of that. Of all the additions to this silly debate in which celebrities' opinions are the most important thing in the world, I think Jennifer Anniston made a good point. It isn't that unconventional movies aren't around anymore. Low budget filmmaking is about as creative and personal as it's ever been, but what has mostly disappeared from our screens is the mid-budget movie. The polished, widely released film in the mid tens of millions,under a hundred million. The market for these films has never been lower. As big blockbusters have become such incredible hype machines, it has become far safer for studios to bank all their money on a few tentpoles while avoiding any risks on anything else that might fail to recoup it's budget, being drowned out in the sea of massive brand recognized action adventure films.

So what does this all mean when discussing Joker? Well for starters, despite being based on a comic character, Joker IS a mid-budget movie. Made for $55 million dollars and earning already three quarters of a billion even without opening in China, Joker stands as proof that mid-budget movies have the potential to be successful. That you don't need to spend over a hundred million for a gamble to be worth it. But more importantly, it shows that movies can be successful with audiences while breaking the conventional movie mold. Joker doesn't have a hero. It doesn't have a heroes journey. It's not groundbreaking for those who are more intimately familiar with diverse forms of cinema, but showing a brutal in depth character study like this is so far out of the norm for mainstream cinema of the 2010's.