The original movie was overrated. It was watching a vulnerable guy get beat up and beat down until it reached a single point which was the only point.

Whilst being interviewed by a cruel TV host who only brought him on the show to mock him, Arthur tells a joke: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner, with a society that abandons him and treats him like shit?” Arthur rhetorically asks. Then he answers as he shoots the cruel TV host who was holding him up for amusement. The Joker yells, “You get what you deserve!”

Of course, Arthur's self awareness itself to ask the question and answer it breaks immersion to me. It is the author speaking to us. The director might as well have walked on set with a sign. It is a valid point though. The movie paints us a picture of a vulnerable disabled white male - one of the least celebrated and protected groups in our society.

The left hated the movie because it challenged their discourse of privilege. For example Rolling Stone talked of concerns that the, "that Joker casts disaffected young white men in an overly sympathetic, verging on celebratory, light". Should we not treat vulnerable victims of abuse with sympathy?

It's difficult to see how it could have been followed though, without re-writing Fleck to be enormously less inadequate. The director had always said it was not set up for a sequel.