A good film always starts with a good idea, but it is a complex blend of planning, design, execution, and post-production work that brings that good idea to become something people will watch over and over again, without all of that, it becomes nothing more than lost potential that is looked over. 

But, what makes an idea good? People love the horror genre, but in the style of a rom-com? Which tries to teach you the value of taking care of the environment? Something about that doesn’t seem quite right… To have a good idea, you need to target a certain audience, and then research and understand what it is that they want to see.  

Take for example one of my favourite films, Fantastic Mr Fox, directed by Wes Anderson. The idea was originally created by Roald Dahl as a comical adventure to mesmerize the young audience he had created. Because of this young audience, he wanted them to relate to the story, teaching them the value of accepting family, and the new people in their lives, which they would relate to.  

After the idea was created, Anderson took these macro elements and integrated them with his unique style of film making. Taking into account the audience, genre, messages and style of the story, he designed everything in a way that it could be taken straight from picture book and used stop motion keep the cartoonish feel of Roald Dahl’s story, while being able to implement his brilliant cinematography. Anderson also used very upbeat music throughout the film, especially through montage like scenes, making scenes exciting, and never allowing a dull moment, and keeping the attention of the children and families watching. This was paired with his unique style of cinematography, where he would capture scenes either in one place, or in a panning motion, or always keeping one person/thing the centre of the shot. All of this coming together in post-production is what makes this film, in my opinion one of the best films. 

However, this is just one of a plethora of ways that a film can be made, different combinations of genres, acting styles, camera shots, all of them are the tools for an endless amount of films, and those different and unique combinations are what make films good. This all means there is no single way to make a good film, as long as you are able to capture and project story you intended to the intended audience. 

In my personal opinion, I would give this film a 9/10.

One scene that I really enjoyed was the subway scene with 3 murders. This is because it really showed a turning point in Arthur’s decent into madness. Before the murders, we saw Arthur laugh uncontrollably at a woman being abused, which shows a clear conflict with his humanity as he wants to help the woman, however as we already know Arthur will turn into the villain, Joker, showing his laughter could be unsympathetic, which poses a moral conflict whether we should feel sympathy for him or not. The moral conflict then increases as he murders the 3 abusers, because us the audience, we know death is a horrible thing, and Joker is a vile person, but there is still a part that feels sympathy for Arthur knowing his tragic background, and the reasons he’s doing it, which I love because it’s really up to the audience on how to interpret this scene.