it makes me wonder at what point this thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think it’s more of what’s already been shown in the trailers, like something terrorist in the subway. The trailers alone make it seem like he’s out to cause mass panic, which plays directly into what’s going on in real life. It has nothing to do with him being criminal. If that were the case, all sorts of people would have been robbing casinos because of Oceans 11.

Another example is Natural Born Killers. I worked as a projectionist when that movie came out and we had protests outside our theater. Just a few dozen with posters and whatnot. Due to the nature of the movie, that was the argument, that the characters would inspire people to start doing the same thing. And we have had our share of Mickey/Mallory wannabes after. Not right then, but I’ve read a few that had done that. The big difference was that during that time - 1994 - we didn’t have a polarized society like we do now. Same gun laws for the most part, but of course no internet at that time to exacerbate things the way they are now.

But it’s no longer that time. It’s insane the amount of murders that’s happened since then. And every mass shooting is publicized and people who are affected are interviewed and they tell how their lives are forever changed. So while we talk of the whole “We’ll we’re just more sensitive now”, we’ll yeah, we see what happens.

Off soapbox - my big hope is that Phillips somewhat takes the violence responsibly. But if it’s the whole he gets beaten up and made fun of and causes him to go psycho and just does terroristic things - yeah, that’ll inspire some people who are prone to that kind of past do something crazy. Drawback of making a psychological movie like this and it’s intention being entertainment. But if he can pull it off, then good for him. And I’m saying this non-sarcastically.

E Unit,
I'm glad you brought up NBK, because I watched that recently and I think that film is more prophetic than we give it credit for. Obviously it's not completely on-point, as I don't think anyone in entertainment could have predicted where we are today 25 years later, but all the ideas are there.
There's a scene late in the film where Mickey is doing his interview and he talks about his demons and all that stuff. The one where he ends it by saying, "Shit, man... I'm a Natural Born Killer." And then the rioting starts. It's a charismatic, cult-like, persuasive call to action. In the movie, it's all criminals. Today, it's 4chan manifestos instead of prime time tv interviews, and would-be criminals, yet only some step out and commit the act. But they DO commit the act, as we see with mass shootings.

But to your point, there were some M&M copycats. Oliver Stone and WB were sued by the family of murder victims because the murderers got high, watched the movie, and went on a killing spree. The case was thrown out as I recall, but it was still a thing. And it's important and good that the filmmakers weren't held responsible. The same would apply to Todd Phillips here. But I also think, and this is more about how the film actually plays out, there's some level of responsibility for how the message of the film is executed (no pun intended).

Accept it or not, folks idolize and idealize the Joker (especially the Dark Knight iteration), even though he was a sociopath ("but he had some good points"). I think this Joker will be a fascinating story (I WANT to see a villain origin story like this), and I'm fairly confident that Phillips and Phoenix have handled this in a highly nuanced way. But I also think people are wrong to completely dismiss the reasonable concern that there's a decent chunk of the audience that won't get it and will see him as a Real Hero, and another decent chunk of the audience that won't get it and will see Phillips/Phoenix as endorsing terroristic behavior. Both such groups are Too Online to a fault, which will surely ruin most discussion about the bigger ideas in the film.