In 2019, Joker was a massive success for Warner Bros., director Todd Phillips, and Joaquin Phoenix, who went on to win an Oscar for Best Actor for his turn as Arthur Fleck/Joker. It broke records for an R-rated film and finished with $1.079 billion worldwide. With that kind of money, it’s easy to see why Warner Bros. wanted a sequel so badly. And thus all roads led to Joker 2, which is better known as Joker: Folie à Deux. In case you were wondering, the subtitle means “madness for two,” but there may be more than two people going mad at Warner Bros. over the opening weekend that Folie à Deux had.
It’s not as if there weren’t any warning signs. The tracking for Joker 2 looked bleak well in advance of its release, and the early reviews were far from glowing. But after getting a D CinemaScore from the people who have actually seen it, Folie à Deux isn’t just in trouble, it’s in freefall. The sequel grossed an estimated $39 million this past weekend, less than half of the $90 million that Joker opened to in 2019. And given the dismal response to the film so far, Folie à Deux will be lucky to make half of that in its second weekend, which is disastrous for a movie that reportedly cost $190-$200 million to make.
What went wrong with Joker 2? Multiple things, and it starts at the top with the choices made by Phillips, who directed and co-wrote Joker: Folie à Deux.
Phoenix’s portrayal of Arthur Fleck in the first movie was haunting because he was able to convincingly play a mentally disturbed man. But even in that movie, he wasn’t truly the Joker. The comic book incarnation that spawned this character isn’t a tragic figure or some pathetic wretch hoping for sympathy and understanding. The real Joker is the Clown Prince of Crime who is one of the most dangerous and fearsome villains in Gotham City. Arthur Fleck is none of those things.
Folie à Deux compounds the mistakes of the original film by moving Joker even further away from his core self. Rather than letting Phoenix’s character evolve into something closer to the Jokers who have come before him, the film devolves Arthur to his most pathetic self and never lets him come close to being the bad guy who made The Dark Knight and Tim Burton‘s Batman so much fun to watch.
All superhero movies make changes for the big screen, and it’s not as if the first Joker movie was any different. The comic book Joker has no definitive origin or even an agreed-upon real name. He’s simply chaos and evil embodied. Movie fans can live with a few changes, but Folie à Deux pushed its luck too far with the film’s portrayal of Harley Quinn.
Lady Gaga became the second actress to play Harley on the big screen, but her persona greatly differs from her comic book counterpart. For one thing, Gaga’s character goes by “Lee” when her name is Harleen Quinzel. It’s the same kind of misguided attempt to “ground” the characters’ fantastical names that led The Penguin‘s main character to be called Oz Cobb in his new series, rather than Oswald Cobblepot.
What’s in a name? It wouldn’t have stood out as much if Gaga’s character had more in common with Harley. Instead, this version lacks the inherent tragedy of her relationship with Joker. Lee is turned into a manipulative person who was already deeply disturbed before she met Joker. She encourages him to be even crazier, rather than the other way around. That flips their dynamic, but it isn’t true to who they were meant to be as characters.
On a certain level, it makes sense to cast Lady Gaga in a musical. She’s not a great actress, but she is a great singer. Why then, does the film seemingly go out of its way to make Gaga, one of pop music’s best artists right now, and Phoenix sound like terrible singers? Phoenix proved he could sing in Walk the Line, but Phillips felt it would be more believable if Arthur and Lee had trouble carrying a tune.
Fans of the first movie were openly dubious about Phillips’ plans to add musical numbers to Joker 2. That may be why many of them didn’t rush out to see the sequel. It’s simply the wrong audience for the material. Ironically, $39 million would been a great opening weekend for a musical that wasn’t a comic-book movie with a bloated $200 million budget. And it’s that high budget that will keep this film from breaking even or turning a profit.
Where did this film’s nearly $200 million budget go? Because it’s really unclear onscreen how the money was used. There are some elaborate set pieces, but nothing that justifies such an astronomical figure. Phoenix reportedly nabbed $20 million alone, but aside from him and Lady Gaga, the cast is far from an all-star affair.
For the kind of money that Joker 2 was made for, it’s reasonable to expect something that could live up to that cost. There simply isn’t anything that does though, and that might be a heist greater than anything the Joker has ever come up with.
As Mark Hamill’s Joker so aptly put it in Batman: The Animated Series, “Without Batman, crime has no punch line.” Much like Sony’s Spider-Man-less movies featuring his villains — like Morbius and the upcoming Kraven the Hunter — Folie à Deux feels empty without Batman’s presence. The first Joker movie at least acknowledged the Waynes and featured the early part of Batman’s origin. The second film is nearly devoid of any references to the Dark Knight himself.
Ultimately, the Joker can only go on so long by himself. He needs a Batman to oppose, and this film doesn’t give him that worthy adversary. Even before it became clear that Folie à Deux will lose a lot of money, Phillips said he was done making DC movies after this one. So there will be no Joker versus Batman movie after this, not that Arthur Fleck was ever really supervillain material. But that’s what fans wanted, and Folie à Deux‘s inability to deliver that is almost its own kind of punchline. It just isn’t very funny.
Joker: Folie à Deux is now playing in theaters.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
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