This is not a joke! One week after Joker: Folie à Deux shimmies into the box office, audiences are asking, “What the hell happened?” Is this highly anticipated sequel the victim of directorial injustice? Are jaded, unimaginative audiences becoming harder to please? Or is something more sinister to blame?
The original Joker (2019), on a $65 million budget, became the highest-grossing R-rated movie in history. Earning over $1 billion worldwide and solidifying Joaquin Phoenix’s character as the most beloved since Heath Ledger’s in The Dark Knight. With the bar set that high, what could possibly go wrong with a sequel? Apparently, a lot.
Joker: Folie à Deux struggled through its opening weekend, gathering a meager $37 million at the box office. This is on top of a disappointing Venice Film Festival premiere, and a “D” CinemaScore spells disaster for Warner Bros. and DC Studios as the film endures its theatrical release. But why are audiences so appalled? Where did it all go wrong, and who’s to blame?
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The first and foremost rejected aspect of the film is not its performances, cinematography, or directorial vision but its musicality. While some critics deny that it’s a musical, audiences maintain that nobody expected or wanted the singing and dancing. Stating it continuously interrupted the narrative. While music played an important role in the first film, the choice to make a spectacle out of it in the second is, to say the least, unappreciated.
Musical or not, the real issue with the film has a lot more to do with the fact that it exists in the first place. Joker has a self-contained narrative. It’s quick and beautiful and leaves more questions than answers. But the ambiguity is part of its attraction. For those reasons, one may suspect that a sequel was never necessary, and they’d be right. The problem with Folie à Deux is that it shouldn’t exist. The truth of the matter is that there’s nothing new to say, and this Joker’s story is over.
Ultimately, it seems the real villain here is the studio system. Joker: Folie à Deux features incredible performances from Phoenix and Lady Gaga and stunning visuals from cinematographer Lawrence Sher, all under the directive vision of Todd Phillips. All aspects of the film that heard no complaints. But was any of it really necessary? No. The musical nature of the film was not an inspired choice but a desperate attempt to add substance to a narrative that has nothing new to offer. With movie ticket prices soaring past $20 in some states, nobody wants to show up for a long, drawn-out plot that evolves into exactly nothing in the end.
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Why make Folie à Deux in the first place? Because the first movie was so profitable Warner Bros. forgot everything that made it special. Joker received a budget of $65 million and earned $1.07 billion. Joker: Folie à Deux comes in at $190 million before marketing and must earn at least $450 million to break even. The lesson in all this is that money, star power, and the success of previous films have no bearing on whether or not a new film will be worth watching. Better films are made on shoestring budgets than the underperforming quarter-billion-dollar excuses for blockbusters that the studios have been churning out since the streaming wars began. Unfortunately, Joker: Folie à Deux is a shining example of what happens when studios blindly place profit over practicality.
