Joker Rising (2013)

A Masterpiece!

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie was easily the best fan film I have ever seen done and no one should pay any attention to the review done by "jamests" from Canada, as none of his comments pertain to the film itself but are merely complaints about the director going in new directions that were intended, well thought out, and made the movie and characters come to life as they seemed to be within the realm of the possible and made sense. I was riveted from beginning to end and even if there were some minor production glitches like variations in the sound volume, the movie on the whole could stand up to most of what we see on our big screens and televisions even today. Hollywood or some studio in it should hire this man and do it soon because he has created a piece of art work here that some studio should be buying and putting on television itself if permission can be obtained with respect to any copyrights issues etc. Once you see it I am sure you will agree that this one is a nobrainer, because for what it is, it really is that good. Watch for yourself and see.In any event, well done Mr. Gearhart and cast! Well done!

Frist off, I seriously can't understand how some people are giving this 10 stars, even for a fan made film.They got pretty much every character wrong from Killer Croc (who is apparently Rodriguez, not Waylon Jones) to Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin (who looks pretty much looks like Andrew Lincoln/Rick from The Walking Dead), The Riddler, or as he's known in this, "Riddles", who is the exact opposite of The Riddler. The only thing "Riddles" and The Riddler have in common is they're both men. "Riddles" doesn't even say a single Riddle throughout the entire film or even hint towards his obsession with them in any way other than wearing a necklace with a green question mark hanging on the end of it. Harley Quinn is now a prostitute who works for "Riddles" and meets the Joker/Cyrus by standing on a street corner. In every origin story for her, she is a psychologist working for Arkham who is assigned to The Joker to study him and ends up falling in love with him over time as she slowly goes insane as she falls in love with him.Now for the acting. Other than basically every character being portrayed completely wrong, the acting was also pretty bad most of the time. They would constantly change how loud they were talking for no reason which at times, made it near impossible to hear what they were saying without having to turn my volume up. The movies was filled with clichés and scenes that made no sense at all. They were constantly telling Cyrus/Joker to "smile" or "why so serious", and all sorts of lines that they took from The Dark Knight series, using them to the point where it got annoying. I really don't understand why they felt the need to change basically every Batman villain that appeared in this. I really can't see why they couldn't just use random people as characters in this rather than having all sorts of famous villains in it, just for them to all get killed off in the end. In my opinion, it would have made more sense, and worked better, if everyone Joker/Cyrus met throughout the story that got killed at some point were just random thugs or mob bosses rather than ruin well established villains just for plot. Especially for Harley Quinn. If they had just changed her to be some random girl that he fell in love with, it would have worked a lot better, and they wouldn't have even had to change any of the script for her character.

This is apparently a fan made film. If you enjoy fan made films, you might enjoy it. However, its overall production values, sound quality, and acting level make it clear that this is not a professional production. If this were a studio or professional film, I would have given it one star. However, I don't want to completely discourage the film makers, who more than likely worked hard creating it. I did not care for it. A previous reviewer suggested that the film might be compared to Tarantino's work. The film is similar in that Tarantino is preoccupied with crime in his films. However, this film feels more like the repetitious, uninspired imitations of Tarantino's work that took the most superficial trappings of his movies but lacked the goofy, twisted imagination that has caused him to play with the film form rather than slavishly copy one film or another. I am not really a Tarantino fan, but I have appreciated some of his movies as having a unique voice, sense of humor, and awareness of how they can confound viewer expectations. This film does none of that. The Joker as a character is all about a sense of humor, sick as it may be. There is none of that either.

I'm not entirely sure exactly how so many people have been gushing over this on YouTube, but this entirely missed the mark in my opinion. Firstly, calling the city "Gotham", then filming entirely in palm tree infested California is distracting to say the least. Then there's the writing, the most familiar lines were pulled directly out of The Dark Knight. The Riddle... sorry, "Riddles", is a pimp that just happens to spout off some terrible "riddle" when he tries to attack the Jok... Dang, I mean "Cyrus", that goes something like, "What's covered in scales and full of metal? A stuck fish". Oh yeah, and "Harley" is an iPhone 4 carrying hooker that dies before he even becomes the Joker.I watched this because of all the glowing reviews on YouTube, but now I'm starting to think that none of them have ever actually been formally introduced to the genius that is the Batman universe.The best thing I can say is that for $3,000 and 8 days of filming, I guess this is better than some other independent fare as far as the actual cinematography goes...I mean no disrespect to the filmmakers, I simply must say that as a life long fan of anything Batman, this was very disappointing.It is obvious to me that the people in charge of promoting this movie have sent people to down rate my review. I assure anyone taking this into consideration that watching will be a waste of time and that my review is wholly accurate. Keep sending people to down rate my review, it doesn't make your film any better.