Ron Schira

I would’ve liked to have seen more of Gaga’s descent into criminality and the Joker’s solidification of his demented psyche. The backstory of her family and education totally weakened, her character’s impact. The music was more of a distraction than a storytelling device that made sense of the two main character’s interaction. The Joker, not Fleck, had a number of opportunities in the film to show his control over the situation and display Quinn’s powerful contribution to that madness. I kept waiting to see examples of joker’s unreliable narrative and delusional experience, but it was only a queue for a musical performance, which was disappointing..The way I think this is going to fit into the Batman timeline is when she said she was pregnant. That child will actually become Batman‘s nemesis since the first movie only portrayed a young Bruce, which was four years ago and not enough time for Bruce to become the Batman, giving Junior Fleck, a chance to mature into the modern criminal that is the Joker. For the most part, I thought the film was choppy and missing clarification. Making it a musical was a bad choice in my opinion and wasted its potential to really explore the relationship between him and Quinn and giving the film more substance.