A few weeks after its debut, Joker Folie à Deux proved that it would never be a match to its predecessor.
The 2024 sequel to the 2019 Joker movie has proven to be one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. The original movie, Joker was able to rake in more than 1 billion dollars from just box office sales alone, especially impressive for a 55 million dollar budget film. On the flipside, in an article written by Variety, Joker Folie à Deux is set to bomb the box office with at least a 150 million dollar loss after speeding more than 300 million dollars on production and marketing.
After the critically acclaimed release of the first film, everyone assumed the Joker movie was finished. The story enacted a new complex and interesting interpretation of the character Joker, and most people were satisfied with the movie being a standalone film. Movie director and co-writer Tod Philips came forward before the 2019 release of Joker claiming that “the movie’s not set up to [have] a sequel. We always pitched it as one movie”. This begs to question why a sequel even happened.
Why create a sequel to Joker?
The Joker being a self-contained story, it did not need a sequel it was done. However, Tod Philips claims “I will do anything Joaquin wants to do”. In the end, Joaquin Phoenix wanted to do more as Arthur Fleck(Joker) and Philips agreed to help Joaquin fulfil his desire. Joaquin Phoenix envisioned himself acting as Joker on stage, singing and dancing, which inevitably led to the sequel being produced as a musical.
On top of that the huge success of the first film definitely meant there was a big monetary incentive from Warner Bros. to give Philips a second Joker movie to direct. With that much money being on the table it’s next to impossible to say no even if a sequel was never part of the plans. Warner Bros. did not think this one through, given Philips history of producing an amazing movie (The Hangover) and flop the sequels.
Movie review Joker Folie à Deux
Upon release critics and audiences alike demonstrated their distaste for the not so anticipated Joker Folie à Deux. Rotten Tomatoes critics rated the movie with a 32% score and audiences treated it similarly with the same score on the website. IMDB shows slightly better results with a Meta score of 45/100 and an audience rating of 5.3 out of 10. In general, everyone was impressed with the film and many hated it.
For my part I also believe the sequel was extremely lacklustre. From, the get go it was already going to be difficult to surpass the high standards of the first film: a down to earth tale of a man ostracised by society and his eventual descent into madness. They had to create something crazy if they even wanted to come close to surpassing the original film and made the bold decision to transform Joker Folie à Deux into a musical. On paper, the idea does not seem to merge well with the gritty and complex plot of the original story. In practice, it definitely didn’t work either.
It definitely did not help that the plot of the film felt very stale, predictable and not very groundbreaking. The romance between Lady Gaga’s character, an interpretation of Harley Quinn and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker was intriguing, but ultimately never developed and was severely underused in favour of enacting Fleck’s trial. The trial itself seems like a retelling of much of its predecessor’s plot, and never really inventing something new.
On the other hand, the production itself was very impressive, with the sets, camera work and directing reminiscent of the first film. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance was also just as good as in the first film and definitely brings life to the complex character of Fleck. Lady Gaga herself also does a great job of interpreting Harley Quin and her singing made the musical parts slightly more tolerable.
Arthur Fleck
The biggest criticism for the film itself has to do with the poor deconstruction of Arthur Fleck. By the end of the first film, Arthur Fleck fully embraces the Joker persona after desperately trying to survive in a society that never really tried to help him and bullied him to the ground. He transforms his fearful, depressed and submissive character into the anarchistic Joker who wants to get revenge against society.
All the crafted character development comes undone within the first few seconds of the film when Fleck is back to being the same man he was at the beginning of the previous film. This character regression greatly impacted the success of the film, as the film becomes a musical about Fleck trying to discover his Joker persona once again, and ultimately rejecting it.
The film never gave the audience the chance to see the Joker in all its crazy and anarchistic glory, but rather decided to pretend that Joker never existed in this second film. It was truly unsatisfying to watch Arthur go through the same memories from the previous film and not grow. The butchering of Joaquin Phoenix’s character is the biggest issue with the film.
Is it worth watching?
The short answer is no. If you enjoyed watching the first film, Joker Folie à Deux will only be a disappointment that ruins the great character created from its predecessor. I would not even recommend it to someone who enjoys watching musicals either, as they really took away from the film experience.
The only saving grace for this movie is that in an interview Todd Philips says “It was fun to play in this sort of sandbox for two movies, but I think we’ve said what we wanted to say in this world”. Hopefully Joker 3 never gets announced, and I can go back to pretending Joker Folie à Deux was just a wild dream.
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