In short, **** Todd Phillips.Secondly - why this discourse of "why do people like villains" can be read too much into and cause self-created problems for critics and creatives, and why I think this impacted Joker.
So people like villains,
It doesn't mean people are secretly psychos and losers who want to watch the world burn and the idea that the masses need to be educated and uplifted/enlightened by content-creators and members of the literati has been debunked on a societal level more times than I can fathom.
Watching Tarantino movies doesn't encourage people into a life of crime, watching horror movies doesn't make serial killers, enjoying Hopkins performance as Hannibal Lecter doesn't make someone a cannibal, liking Darth Vader doesn't make people into space-fascists and enjoying the Joker as a character and perhaps even feeling a degree of empathy doesn't make someone a crazed anarchist.
I thought we all collectively got over this hurdle with the insane critical reaction and fear-mongering spread about the first film before its release...
and the audience I believe did get over it because, being rational and decent ordinary people who actually understand human nature and dont view their fellow humans as impressionable sheep who will follow whatever example is shown to them, they dismissed this fear-mongering hysteria by the critical class as the ******** it was.
Sadly it seems Phillips bought this hysterical school of thought hook-line-and-sinker.
This movie seems to be made with one purpose only = to "correct" the "mistakes" made by the last film in making the Joker character remotely relatable or sympathetic as clearly this is creating a false idol of deviance for the gullible masses to adopt as a symbol and it is the duty of the content-creator class to educate the masses on why a man who kills people is bad and we are bad for remotely liking him in a film that was crafted specifically to help audiences empathize with the character...
Because clearly an audience with such a capacity for empathy and sympathy are all ready to be moulded into psychopaths, incels and whathaveyou.
So the solution? deconstruct everything that drew people to the previous film's iteration of the character and furthermore deconstruct the fanbase itself with an audience surrogate....
Its just insulting at this point and betrays a condescending attitude from the director and writers.