It’s depressing how many times I’ve had to say it this year, but this movie should not exist.
The Joker was not made to be an antihero. Todd Phillips was not cut out to be a blockbuster filmmaker. The original Joker — a $70 million R-rated Scorsese riff — was not designed to be a billion-dollar hit, much less an Oscar winner or a Best Picture contender. This movie should never have been given a sequel — much less a franchise — drawing money and attention away from the new Matt Reeves continuity for Batman and the eagerly-awaited DC cinematic universe relaunch under Gunn/Safran.
Most depressingly of all, there shouldn’t be enough toxic masculine douchebag trolls out there who unironically identify with the Joker (the Joaquin Phoenix take, specifically) to make the first movie such a massive hit, and the execs at WB/DC should know better than to cater to them. But it speaks to the rank incompetence of David Zaslav and his whole WarnerMedia crew that their movie that shouldn’t have been a hit, yet somehow was. And in their clueless desperation for money and credibility, of course they greenlit a sequel.
To repeat, the WarnerMedia executives made a billion-dollar smash for $70 million. And they wanted to replicate that success so badly, they pumped $200 million into the sequel. Talk about a bunch of clowns.
Joker: Folie a Deux was made for all the worst possible reasons, and we’re all worse off for it. But I have to wonder if maybe we all knew that on some level.
Seriously, how long did the cultural impact of Joker really last? Outside the C-suite at WarnerMedia and the knuckleheads on 4chan, who was asking for a sequel? While the media dutifully covered the approaching Joker sequel as a huge deal, I’m not sure how many people online were counting the days to this as their most anticipated film of the year. And while it’s standard practice to jump to judgments and call something a bomb or a hit in mid-debut, the derision of Folie a Deux seemed particularly fast and harsh.
In the past, I (and Todd in the Shadows, who first suggested the idea) have ruminated on the existence of delayed bombs: Failed movies or albums that follow up on something that shouldn’t have been as massively successful as it was. Everyone bought into the first entry for whatever reason, without realizing they’d been suckered until after their money had been spent. Thus audiences are more hesitant to spend money on the follow-up. That could be what we’re looking at here.
Anyway, Folie a Deux picks up two years after the first movie, when Arthur Fleck (that’s the Joaquin Phoenix character) is still locked up in Arkham and days away from standing trial for the events in the first movie. Here’s the problem: Everybody knows Fleck is guilty. We the audience know that he’s guilty. Fleck himself knows that he’s guilty. Literally everyone knows that Fleck is guilty because they saw him commit cold-blooded murder on live national television.
The bottom line here is that there’s no possibility for a happy ending here. Even if Fleck is somehow acquitted, he’s a cultural pariah and his life is totally fucked. So the plot of this 140-minute movie is entirely worthless because we already know exactly how the trial is going to play out.
That said, the trial is primarily a means to explore a different concept: The notion that Arthur Fleck and the Joker may not necessarily be one and the same. Sure, Arthur’s defense counsel (played by Catherine Keener) is exclusively interested in Joker as a split personality brought about by childhood trauma in such a way that her client could be acquitted by reason of insanity.
Even so, the film puts a lot of time and effort into exploring the notion of Joker as a larger-than-life fiction that Arthur wears as a mask. Time and again, we repeatedly see that Arthur’s legion of disciples don’t care about the actual human being behind the myth. These strangers — and Arthur himself — only care about Joker as a means of weaponizing their insecurities and frustrations with the outside world.
In other words, the film is taking direct shots at everyone — in Gotham, the real world, and all points in between — who adore the Joker unironically. This unfortunately means sitting through 140 minutes of watching the protagonist get repeatedly shit on by the filmmakers themselves. Even if you agree with the sentiment that Arthur and all his adoring fans are clinically insane, that doesn’t make for a pleasant or enlightening film to watch.
But what about the musical numbers? Well, because this is supposed to be a movie about the Joker, we the audience expect to see the title character acting in flashy-splashy theatrics. But the filmmakers were dead-set on portraying Joker as the pathetic mask of an even more pathetic weakling. Big loud musical numbers presented as dream sequences are an effective means of having it both ways. I might add that sticking Arthur with the lyrics of existing songs means the writers didn’t have to bother writing more dialogue for the lead character, and I seriously get the impression that the filmmakers wanted Arthur to talk as least as possible.
Which brings us to Lady Gaga, playing Harleen Quinzel in name only. Hell, she’s not even playing Harley in name only, as the character’s only ever named “Lee”. This version of the character isn’t a therapist, she doesn’t gradually come to love the Joker, and there’s no abusive relationship for her to leave. Literally nothing beloved or iconic about Harley Quinn gets adapted here.
Instead, Lee is an Arkham patient who’s totally and completely devoted to Joker off the jump. She’s the figurehead of the Joker Faithful, a psychopath who clearly doesn’t care about Arthur, but she’s head over heels for Joker. She’s an unstable anarchist who loves Joker as an icon of carefree destruction in the face of oppression and order.
That’s not Harley Quinn. That’s Punchline. But Punchline is a relatively new character unknown to anyone in the mainstream. (Though I expect to see Punchline make her film/TV debut any day now, the way DC Comics is pushing the character.) As such, it really does feel like Harley Quinn was only included and cast with a name actor because it would’ve been weird if we got two Joker movies without her. Then again, I don’t know why anyone even bothered with this perfunctory step, when it feels like the filmmakers couldn’t care less about any connection with the greater Batman mythos. Hell, nobody’s even pretending that this is the Joker who’s destined to become the most iconic nemesis of the world’s greatest detective.
There are other actors here, but they’re barely worth mentioning. Catherine Keener and Brendan Gleeson both look like they’re phoning it in. Zazie Beetz and Leigh Gill obligingly reprise their roles from the previous film for a few short scenes. Oh, and we’ve got Harry Lawtey playing the prosecutor Harvey Dent, but this portrayal is a void of charisma and he really should be Bruce Wayne’s age at this point and who really gives a shit?
Come to think of it, the DC Studios logo was nowhere to be seen. The opening credits made no mention of any DC production company involved with this movie. Really says a lot, doesn’t it?
No two ways about it, folks, this movie really is a cruel joke. This isn’t just a sequel that retroactively makes the previous film worse, this is a sequel that’s retroactively trying to annihilate the previous film entirely. And somehow, I can’t quite hate it for that.
The sick and twisted toxic fanboys who loved the previous movie will waste their money and 140 minutes of their time getting repeatedly dunked on. And the WarnerMedia executives betting on a billion-dollar smash hit will be hundreds of millions of dollars in the red this time next week. Good. Fuck ’em.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for the psychopathic shitheads who were hoping that this would be every bit as good and/or profitable as the previous film. Hell, I’d stake my wallet that even as I type this, those same psychopathic shitheads are already trying to polish this turd in every way their delusional little minds can conceive. I can’t even be mad at Todd Phillips, because he was clearly and emphatically trying to shut the door on any further blockbuster tentpoles so he can go back to making mid-budget comedies. Guy tanked his own career in a way I can’t help but respect.
I don’t have a problem with this movie taking shots at a subset of the audience. I have a problem with how this movie was given such a massive freaking audience, taking shots at everyone like we’re all that subset.
Put it this way: Right now, there’s a movie out called Am I a Racist?, in which Matt Walsh — through laughably thin disguises and selective editing — tries to make liberals look like idiots. (Like a Sasha Baron Cohen routine, with a third of the talent.) Imagine a movie on that scale — a movie made and marketed for conservatives, small enough that only conservatives would go out to see it — except that the actual movie goes completely against all marketing and was made to shit all over conservatives for two and a half hours straight. That’s what this movie should’ve been.
With Joker: Folie a Deux, WarnerMedia basically gave Todd Phillips a blank check, and he used it to burn $200 million of the studio’s money in a way that would make the Heath Ledger take proud. The only downside is that precisely because so much money was spent, the splash zone is so much wider. If the damage was only limited to the fuckheads who genuinely identify with Arthur Fleck and unironically love him, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. Unfortunately, because this movie was made and marketed for a global audience, the expectation is that we’re supposed to suffer right along with the deserving fuckheads.
Don’t. This is a deeply unpleasant, overlong, and overly expensive movie in which the unpleasant tedium is the point. If you’re not the intended audience, there’s nothing for you here. Do your part to make sure this duology stays dead and buried.
To clarify things, WarnerMedia is the AT&T regime ran by Jason Kilar that accidentally made Joker 1 a billion dollar hit amidst other incompetent decisions his tenure made when they came up with HBO Max, chased away talent like Nolan and greenlit those other DC films (part of the blame lies on Hamada too).
It was Zaslav that thought that Warner Bros Discovery needed to greenlight a sequel as one of their first projects they didn’t inherit from WarnerMedia because in all his infinite wisdom, his WBD regime wanted an instant hit and saw Joker (one of the few successes of that WarnerMedia AT&T regime) as a key. And it’s on them for giving Phillips $200 million and this film bombing as hard as it did.