Perhaps I was a bit too dramatic with my words.. it wasn't earth shattering to me lol.
I simply get no pleasure from watching a film that is soley and exclusively based on tragedy. And no, I absolutely did not expect the sequel to playout this way just based on the first film.
Quite the opposite. By the ending of the first one, I certainly never expected to have to sit through 2+ hrs more of that for the sequel.
Yeah, **** movies like that. Not my thing, I guess.
Let me ask you something.
What did you get outta these films?
A lot.
From a technical point of view the film is shot, lit, colour corrected beautifully. Imagery is very well thought out, the play with lighting and the audiences perspective of Arthur's imagination based on visual cues is well thought out and established. Hildur Gudnadottirs score underpins and heightens a lot of what is shown.
From a story point of view, I always find it fascinating when characters or people in real life have introspection, how they wrestle and come to grips with themselves and themselves in relation to others. How people respond to situations they can't control.
I find the world bleak, myself. Are you always happy all of the time? No, most of the time it's a struggle on an ever-changing scale, but we're always pursuing the hope of being perpetually happy. Some people have worse and worsening scales than others.
To speak of the bleakness itself in this film, I've seen far worse. I'm not disturbed by it. But the whole point of storytelling is to learn something or to consider other points of views and concepts. For me both films portray an interesting take through the lens of a Joker type character in Gotham. Beyond that, actually how the films are perceived by the audiences for both films also heightens what they were saying. So I enjoy that both films created a spark of conversation, outside of just pure 'I enjoyed that, how great was that fight scene'?
As I've gotten older my enjoyment of comic book films as just entertainment has wained, I'd rather them say something or do something more. It's why I prefer DC over Marvel. As much as Snyder's trilogy was dunked on at the time, and lampooned for being pretentious for daring to include religious metaphors or more philosophical aspects to the characters, at least they tried to explore some things in an otherwise bland cinema environment - which actually pays off further down the line, as rewatching them recently they actually feel like a film as opposed to an experience that I can give or take like Marvels films.
All that to say that there are things to take away or talk about in both of them, of course you can choose to overlook them, for in my opinion, asinine reasons such as them have musical moments, or not making the character exactly what you were hoping for.
