Aaron's Thoughts
The thing that kept rattling around my brain while watching this was Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel. He wrote the book and then became so frustrated with the narrative around it that he wrote a second book just to make his original point so obvious that you couldn’t miss it.
The same is going on here. There is no hiding Todd Philip’s disdain for the people who loved the first movie. Can’t quite remember ever feeling so hated by someone making a movie.
I really do love the swing. I love that he burned $200 million of the studios money to give a big middle finger to the fanboys. I love that he knew this is the reception would get. I love Gaga being a stand in for the audience. I love that he taunts the audience throughout - here is your beloved Joker that you want to wreck havoc literally tap dancing.
As much as I love all that, once you accept that’s what he’s trying to do (which you pick up on pretty quickly), there really isn’t much there.
He belabors the point so much that even if you are on board with what he was going for (like me), you still don’t want to be on the ride till the end.
