“Joker: Folie à Deux” finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him. Who knew that we needed a detailed origin story for one of the most iconic comic book villains in history? It wasn’t until the release of 2019’s Joker film that we fans got something we never thought we wanted. Todd Phillips’ standalone Joker film was a brilliant look into mental illness and the origins of the Crown Prince of Crime with a well deserved Oscar winning performance from Joaquin Phoenix. That film ended on an ambiguous note with Arthur Fleck supposedly being locked up in Arkham, even though there are plenty of debates as to what was real or just in his twisted mind. I personally championed the film as a great psychological character study and the perfect Elseworlds story with virtually zero connection to any other DC movie or universe. Although I was not thrilled with the announcement of a sequel (let alone a musical), I was still willing to keep an open mind going into this film. I say without hyperbole that this is one of the steepest declines in quality from a great first movie to an utterly terrible sequel. Before I literally rip this movie to shreds, I would like to touch on the few positive aspects of it. Like the first, this film has incredible cinematography, lighting, and impeccable production design. The score by Hildur Guðnadóttir is haunting, atmospheric, ominous, and beautifully composed. Joaquin Phoenix is once again brilliant as Arthur/Joker with the material he is given and Lady Gaga gives it her all as this world’s version of Harley Quinn. It’s always great to see Brendan Gleeson in a movie and he’s excellent as this guard at Arkham who oftentimes physically and verbally abuses Arthur. There are some interesting concepts such as the idea that Arthur and Joker are two separate personalities and the different perspectives Gotham citizens share on how Arthur should be treated by the law/prison system.
Unfortunately, that is about where the film’s merits end for me because Joker: Folie à Deux is one big fat mess and a textbook example of why certain standalone movies shouldn’t be given sequels or a franchise. First off, the movie runs at around two hours and nineteen minutes, but it feels an hour longer. This has to be the most brutally slow pacing in any DC or Batman related movie. I have nothing wrong with a slow burn whatsoever, in fact the first movie had an intriguingly slow build that worked and hooked me. What’s so frustrating with this movie is that whenever you think there is going to be some character or plot development, a musical number begins and any momentum or believability is thrown out the window. In traditional musicals, the song and dance segments are typically used to further the story or give the audience new information or insight into what a character thinks or how they feel. I can’t think of a single musical number in this film that did anything to further the story or give us new information about how Arthur or Harley feel. Their feelings are conveyed through dialogue then redundantly translated into song lyrics that never give any sort of new information or deeper insight into either of these characters. Whereas just about every aspect of the first movie felt grounded, gritty, and realistic, that dramatic tension is completely deflated by the intrusive musical sequences. Not to say that the musical sequences don’t look visually appealing on a technical level, but they seriously felt out of place and undercut whatever tension was present. I didn’t find the singing from Joaquin Phoenix or even Lady Gaga to be all that impressive and there were times that my friends started laughing because of how unbelievable and ridiculous it sounded. The singing is about as good as Will Ferrell singing to his dad in the movie Elf. The movie also doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a sequel to the original movie? Is it a musical? Is it a courtroom drama? Is it this deep character study? Is it some profound commentary on “society?” It never fully commits to any of these things leaving me asking the all important question of, “who was this movie made for?” Was it made for fans of the first Joker movie? No, because it completely undoes just about any and all of Arthur’s character development by the film’s end. Was it made for fans of psychological thrillers? No, because fans of psychological thrillers are typically not interested in musicals. Was it made for Warner Bros to cash in on a universally acclaimed movie all while giving the very fans who loved said film a giant middle finger? I would say yes. It’s almost as if WB in tandem with Todd Phillips for some odd reason felt ashamed of that first movie and wanted to basically retcon the entire thing. Whatever happened behind the scenes doesn’t matter when your final product is so blatantly disrespectful to its audience and fans to the point of trolling them. To make matters worse, a majority of the courtroom scenes, say for one exchange between Arthur and Gary, are quite stale. There is never even a scene outside of Arthur’s imagination where he is the real Joker. All of his scenes as Joker take place in his head, which is such a cop out.
Something that royally pissed me off was how Harley Quinn‘s character manipulates Arthur into being Joker even though he tried his best to distance himself from that persona. It’s almost like Harley Quinn is the physical embodiment of fans of the first Joker movie and Arthur’s reluctance to embrace the Joker personality is Todd Phillips subtly telling the audience that he didn’t want to make this movie. Let’s talk about the ending. A few of Arthur’s Joker cult fanatics set off a bomb in the courtroom and Arthur escapes. Arthur then reluctantly goes for a ride with those fanatics until he busts out of the car and runs away. He then stumbles upon Harley at the iconic “Joker steps” only to find out that she wants nothing to do with him because of Arthur’s inability to embrace the Joker persona Harley loved him for. She leaves, Arthur is arrested by the Gotham Police Department and gets taken back to Arkham. While Arthur is walking around the prison, a random guy comes up to him and makes a joke, saying “you get what you fucking deserve,” and stabs Arthur violently. As Arthur falls to the floor bleeding to death, he has one last vision of him and Harley singing. The camera then shows Arthur lying on the floor dying as the psychopath cuts up his own face in the vein of Heath Ledger’s Joker. So basically, Arthur was just the inspiration for the real Joker and it’s this psychopath who we see looming ominously in the background a few times throughout the film. This is probably one of the most egregiously insulting endings to a movie ever. If people loved the first Joker movie so much (myself included), why make a sequel that completely retcons the entire plot and character development of that movie? It almost felt as if an angry troll on Reddit wrote this movie (especially the ending) as a giant middle finger to every single fan of the first Joker film. This is some seriously appalling fan fiction level execution that comes off as cynical, pretentious, and completely unnecessary. Why did they do this? Is it because of the ridiculous backlash the first film received for supposedly inspiring “white domestic terrorism” or was it Todd Phillips (who openly didn’t want to make this movie) flipping off DC/WB? I don’t know nor do I care because none of the answers to those questions can give me back the nearly two and a half hours of my life wasted on this movie. This is one of the biggest examples of a dramatic decline in quality from a great original movie to an absolutely terrible direct sequel and it profoundly angered me unlike any other new film in recent memory. Overall, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga give it their all, but can’t save Joker: Folie à Deux from being a dull, overlong, messy, and pointless sequel that aggressively retcons and blatantly disrespects fans of the universally beloved original film. The already diminishing returns at the box office and warranted negative reviews from critics/general audiences alike are proof enough that some movies are better suited to stand alone.
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