All those critics wanted was a self-loathing galvanizing incel so they could tweet and write clickbait think pieces validating their bullshyt fear-mongering over "Joker will cause an INCEL CIVIL WAR MASSACRE IN THE STREETS OF EVERY CITY WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO ASDLAJDASLDJS" that they were all parroting before 99% of them had seen even a single frame of the film. Now that it's widely available and everyone's seen it, and it's painfully obvious to anyone with a functioning brain and pair of eyes that this Joker isn't, and never was even hinted at, being close to some incel iconography for people like that to rally around in real life, they have to move the goalposts and move the outrage to "This movie is so
bleak and
nihilistic and
violent and
devoid of joy or happiness, it doesn't say anything about anything" now that their pre-release concern trolling has been exposed as nothing but. Like this ain't a motherfukking
JOKER ORIGIN STORY and that violence and nihilism don't come with the damn territory in spades
Media in 2019 exists not to inform or critique but solely to bait an intrinsic reaction out of you psychologically so you click on it and provide the conglomerate funding and writing it with more ad revenue and domain traffic. Trying to engage or respond to it in legitimate good faith as if it was written or intended to cultivate such discussion like Phillips did is a trap, and such a mistake can and will be weaponized against you for the sake of more shallow baiting for hits and ad revenue from the general public; usually in the form of the kind of parroted cut copy reviews talking along the same lines of dismissal you're seeing now. I don't particularly like or care about Phillips personally so I can't say "hate it had to be him", but it's gross to watch play out in real time all the same