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I want to tell you my secret now.

I see dead people.

Silent green is people.

No, I am the father.

Oh, Rushburn.

What's in the box? You made it!

You blew it up!

Damn you all the hell!

Hi, welcome to this late spoiler special podcast.

We are here today to spoil Joker, the new movie from Todd Phillips, giving us the origin story of the infamous green-haired Batman villain, played by Joaquin Phoenix.

Joining me in the Slate Studios, we're all here together, which is nice, is Forrest Wickman, Slate's Culture Editor. Hello.

Hey, Dana. And Sam, welcome.

Hello. Thanks for coming in.

Okay, so as usual, I like to start these by going around the table asking just for a very brief reaction so people know whether we love or hate it going in. I was thinking about the reason I do that. And I think basically it's because I don't want this to feel like we're reviewing the movie. I want this to feel like we all wrote reviews. Like pretend that we all wrote our reviews and they're up there and people can know our basic argument and we're kind of hashing out stuff we didn't get,

spoiling, et cetera. Anyway, so starting with you, Sam, thumbs up, thumbs down, send your friends or drive your friends away. I hoved it. I elated it. It's hard for me to decide. Like, I am not sorry. I watched it. It is interesting. I think it is maybe, you know, not as, well, definitely not as smart as it thinks it is. It's probably important in what it reflects, although I don't know how much it knows what it's important about. So thumb very much sideways. Okay, yeah. Or are we making it important by talking about it? We can get to that, too. Forrest, what about you? You were in my screening last night, I bet we didn't get to talk after. Yeah, I sort of expected I might be coming on here as the Joker Defender. I think I would have happily been, for example, the Dark Night

defender. Like, I was in college when Dark Night came out. I'm a sometime defender of that movie

and sometimes those types of movies. And I really did not like this movie. I found it even just

boring for most of the first two-thirds, I would say. I found it neither

insightful nor entertaining. And, you know, I think it works best as a showcase for Joaquin

Phoenix. And in that respect, I think that's just a kind of movie that I find myself not as

interested in. I'm not interested in movies that are primarily showcases

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