Joker Rising is a must see for people who are fans of both Batman and can appreciate low budget fan films, though if you hate either, you will hate this. It is one of the better fan films you can see, and the lead's take on Joker is only a small dip in quality from the studio films. The biggest problems however are several of the other actors in smaller roles, several of whom I assume are not actors but friends of the film's creators. As with most fan films, don't expect this to be the best in the series, however it clearly beats the lower tier studio films, namely Batman & Robin.

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.

SPOILERS! Joker Rising is a very creative, brilliant and powerful film. Although it's loosely based on the comics, they somehow made the characters fit into the story line, and was just brilliant. The Joker was awesome, I liked how they made their own origin story for The Dark Knight's Joker, and it was absolutely brilliant! I really liked Harley too, although IMO they should've made her name Harleen since that's her real name, but it's just a minor issue, other than that, she was great. One very powerful scene was at the end when Cyrus/Joker cries and has flashbacks of Harley, made me think of how much he has changed from the beginning. The shots were great, capturing the action and emotion. I give this movie a 10/10, was absolutely amazing, one of the best movies I've ever seen!

When i stumbled on this i wasn't expecting much, but as far as fan films go this is one of the best around if not the best (imo at least). Some great lines and solid acting(for the most part anyway)combined with a very Tarantino-esque soundtrack and over all gritty feel make this a must watch for joker fans. There are loads of brilliant references to the dark knight which put a smile on my face(see what i did there haha...okay i'll get my coat) It was really well shot and filmed my only problem was palm trees showing up in the background in some early scenes which kind of broke the atmosphere slightly but other than that it was great. For $3000 it's unbelievable what this production has achieved do yourself a favor and give it a watch. i eagerly await the sequels.