House of X/Power of X Hot Take

X-Marks the spot with this series! (Ugh. I know. Sorry about that)

Last week, the last issue of Jonathan Hickman's X-men two mini-series came to an end. His return to Marvel was billed as a big event that would change the landscape of the X-men forever (until the next big thing).

I can say definitively that he has done just that. If you read comics, I get that Hickman is not everyone's cup of tea. He tends to write grand, long spanning, complicated stories. Separately, the pieces do not make sense, but they come together as a whole at the end. There is a brilliance in the way that he writes because he is well aware of what he is doing and you just have to wait till the end.

I say all that to say that each issue of his book went from confusing to masterful. Now that it is all done, I can say it is definitely masterful. He has definitely reshaped the X-Men. Their mission is now different. I truly enjoyed this series and there were genuine, mouth wide open surprise moments from me.

The most amazing thing about this series is that Hickman took characters from deep into the X-Men lore and made them relevant. I think the biggest star of these books is Moira McTaggert. To say anything else would spoil things, so I will leave it there. She has been kind of retconned into being probably the most important mutant ever. I know that sounds like the hottest of hot takes, but once you read this series, you will know what I mean.

Some of the forgotten characters from Brian Michael Bendis's run on the X-Men appear and they are have also been thrust into an area of importance. We get characters such as the Phalanx, Doug Ramsey, Forge, Nimrod and others. He pulled in as many X-characters as he could and breathed life into them.

I'm speaking around all the big things that happened in this series because I really don't want to spoil it for people. Okay. Maybe one thing. The mutants now have a sovereign nation built on island called Krakoa. If you know anything about the X-Men, the name Krakoa should be setting of your nerd sense. There are grand ideas here that are going to play out for a little while and I am over the moon. After the last couple of years of trying to do something interesting with the X-Men, I think we finally got it.

To go along with the writing, we get wonderful art from Pepe Larraz (quickly becoming one of my favorite artists) and R.B. Silva (I had written him off a while ago about not being so good on X-Men: Gold. I was wrong).

These books were pure Hickman. The issues are full of graphic design pages and charts. We jump back and forth between the present and the future.

Nevermind anything that came before this, the X-Men are back and I am genuinely excited about what happens next.

The Joker

If I hear send in the clowns one more time...

I wanted to write this up as soon as I could while my memory is still fresh.

I will start off by applauding DC for trying to do something different than it's normal super hero fare. With that being said, this was not a movie that we needed. This is the kind of origin story I don't want, especially for the Joker.

As I think about this movie, there were many things that I thought were problematic. I swear I will have a few good things to say, but let me start with what I didn't like. This movie is extremely slow. I get they are trying to do a slow build, but time is money and this movie wasted both for me in the first half of the movie. We follow around Arthur Fleck, who will become the Joker. He is the saddest of sad sacks, with aspirations to be a comedian, but missing that thing you need. Good jokes.

We spend too much time in his day to day as he lives with his mom and tries to chase his dreams. They try to make him sympathetic by saying that he has a mental illness and a tough upbringing. The first mistake is to attribute his iconic laughing as some kind of mental condition where he laughs for no reason. I call shenanigans. To say that the one thing the Joker is known for is out of his control is BS. So I guess he's not really a bad guy, he's just misunderstood? Please.

As the movie unfolds, surprise surprise, things are not quite what they seem in Arthur's relationship with his mother and his relationship with those around him. Let me pause and say that Joaquin Phoenix does an amazing job. In fact, his acting might be the only thing that is good about this movie. However, if I have to see a few more scenes of him weirdly dancing in his underwear again, it would be too soon if it is any time before NEVER.

Probably my biggest problem about this movie is they try to make him sympathetic and I found that hard to do. This is a guy that I'm supposed to root for? Life beats him down and the way he finally stands up for himself is to start killing people? I hope this isn't a spoiler, but this is a movie about the Joker right? This movie goes out of it's way almost to convince you that in some twisted way, he is justified in his actions. I don't know if I can be down with that.

This movie is really dark and depressing. For half the movie, I was thinking, "Why am I watching this?" It wasn't enjoyable. The movie then quickly starts building to it's crescendo as things spiral out of control and only then, do we start to see the Joker emerge. It was a very long walk to get to that point. I kind of liked the last twenty minutes of the movie. Not because of the escalating violence, but because now there is some real tension and things are actually happening.

Bravo to DC. Slapping Joker on this film is bound to make money and from the looks of it, it already has. If you take away the Joker and it's loose ties to Batman, you're left with a movie about a sad sack that is angry at the world. You can say it is a good psychological study if you want. It just didn't need it to be "Joker".

No origin for the Joker will ever be good enough. The mystery of how he came to be is most of his appeal. It is what made Heath Ledger's Joker so menacing. He was truly unpredictable. In this movie, Arthur's turn is well forecast in bright, blinding lights. This movie also really fails to surprise.

Finally, my last thought. This movie had sections where you see stuff is happening in Arthur's head, so the rest of the movie I am left questioning what is real and what isn't. So then I kept waiting for the reveal and when it didn't happen, I am disappointed. The movie got too clever with it's own narrative and that was to it's detriment. If you have an unreliable narrator, how can you believe what you are seeing? The whole move starts to feel like some weird dream and we're about to wake up.

What I will say is that the acting is really good in this movie. The look of this movie is very consistent, as everything is grim and dreary. Again, Phoenix puts in some good work here and I will admit he has one of the best Joker laughs. Still though, I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie.