My views & problem with this Movie ***Spoilers***

Joker is a great watch for sure. Its deeply engrossing, beautifully shot & very entertaining. It surely has a repeat viewing appeal.

Firstly, we know that Joker right from the beginning had psychological problems; his condition for laughter for instance. Its not about a clean straight character who was driven insane. Its about character who's already crazy, getting pushed to much severe mental disorder. Its fine with me.

The problem I find is that his romantic relationship with his next door neighbour turning out to be a figment of his imagination was totally unnecessary and spoiled the strength of the origin story which the film tries to illustrate. Because then, anything could possibly be a delusion of Arthur. The viewers will have to rely only on those scenes which is shot from third person perspective such as the masked protestor killing Bruce Wayne's parents which we know happened for sure as Arthur (who's an unreliable narrator) wasn't present at that scene but begs a question whether Arthur killed his friend, was he really chased by the two cops, did he kill his mom or did she die naturally, did he confront Thomas Wayne at the restroom etc. and whole lot of things pretty much the entire movie.

Not only that, the whole 'it was all in his mind' thing has been overplayed as hell in movies from many years and the idea is too worn-out to a suit a movie of this scale.

Coming back to the views, I'm surprised to see why has no such discussion sparked about the possibility of Arthur being Step-brother of Bruce Wayne.

I firmly believe in it. After killing his mother, when he returns home, Arthur comes across a photo of his mom written with 'with love' by Thomas Wayne on the back side. Arthur's mom never showed any signs of schizophrenic or crazy behaviour throughout the film. Arthur could have remembered atleast something about his childhood days and abuse if he was abused.

Thomas was indeed a powerful person and could have easily framed Arthur's Mother with false hospital reports & adoption file. Ofcourse this is ambiguous and yet depends on the reliability of the narration and that's the reason again I found 'it was all in his mind' reveal uncomfortable & contrived.