Avengers: Endgame Star Josh Brolin Reveals His Thoughts on Joker

It’s no secret Joker has been quite the divisive movie between fans and critics. Since its […]

October 5, 2019, 11:46pm

It’s no secret Joker has been quite the divisive movie between fans and critics. Since its opening, former Joker voice actor Mark Hamill has revealed his thoughts on the film and now, Avengers: Endgame baddie Josh Brolin has broken silence on the project in an impassioned post on Instagram. According to Brolin, Joker is “simply lifting the rug and looking underneath” some of the problems in today’s world.

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“To appreciate “Joker” I believe you have to have either gone through something traumatic in your lifetime (and I believe most of us have) or understand somewhere in your psyche what true compassion is (which usually comes from having gone through something traumatic, unfortunately),” Brolin says. “An example of dangerous compassion would be to, say, make a film made about the fragility of the human psyche, and make it so raw, so brutal, so balletic that by the time you leave the theatre you not only don’t want to hurt anything but you desperately want an answer and a solution to the violence and mental health issues that have spun out of control around us.”

His full comments can be found in the lengthy Instagram post below.

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To appreciate “Joker” I believe you have to have either gone through something traumatic in your lifetime (and I believe most of us have) or understand somewhere in your psyche what true compassion is (which usually comes from having gone through something traumatic, unfortunately). An example of dangerous compassion would be to, say, make a film made about the fragility of the human psyche, and make it so raw, so brutal, so balletic that by the time you leave the theatre you not only don’t want to hurt anything but you desperately want an answer and a solution to the violence and mental health issues that have spun out of control around us. This film makes you hurt and only in pain do we ever want to change. It’s all in the irony of trauma — a fine line between the resentment of wanting to hurt society back for raping you of a decent life, for not protecting you, and accepting what feels like alien feelings with softening to those others who seem freakish in our era of judgment, and digital damnation. Like kids in Middle School: man, they can just be mean. For no reason. And, sometimes, those awful little clicky kids breed an evil in someone that rages much later, when everyone pretends we are all back to normal, when we all thought it had just manned up and gone away. We have a habit of hating and ostracizing and dividing and sweeping our problems under the rug. Joker, is simply lifting the rug and looking underneath it. Nothing more. Nothing less. It’s there.

A post shared by Josh Brolin (@joshbrolin) on Oct 5, 2019 at 7:34am PDT

Despite its divisiveness, the Todd Phillips film has made a load of cash at the box office. Through Friday night, the movie has made $97.1 million domestically, $39.9m of which has come domestically. New tracking reports suggest the movie will end up making somewhere far north of $155m worldwide by the time the weekend is over.

Joker is now in theaters while Avengers: Endgame can be purchased digitally or on physical home media wherever movies are sold.

Have you seen Joker yet? What have you thought of the movie? Share your thoughts in the comments below!