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• Why did we want Joker: Folie à Deux to fail?

On September 30, four days before Joker: Folie à Deux hit US theaters, Redditor u/Kazrules lamented the film's supposed 'lost hype' to r/boxoffice. The online community, which boasts 1.1 million members, mostly agreed with the idea, and in the 2.2K comments that followed, I couldn't help but notice a common thread in the responders' tone. Namely, satisfaction.

Now look, I know Reddit's gonna Reddit (I've got the downvotes to prove it), but I also felt that same satisfaction from other, less basement-y sources. Sources like Forbes, who asked "Just How Bad Does It Look For Joker 2?" and Slate, who said the movie was "So Bad It’s Almost Laughable," and Men's Journal, who called it "a baffling and boring mishmash of thoughtless platitudes." (Coincidentally, that's also the name of my memoirs.) All these used language that seemed, to me, less like reporting on Joker 2's failure and more like reveling in it. 

Don't get me wrong, this piece is not going to be a stirring defense of the Joker movies. I've not seen the second film and, after a complex relationship, the first and I ultimately parted ways. But I do have to wonder: what did the 2019 Joker movie do so wrong as to incur this amount of vitriol for attempting a sequel? Why did we, as a moviegoing public, seem to want Joker: Folie à Deux to fail?

Well, I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't have a theory, and you wouldn't be reading it if you weren't curious as to whether you despised it. So let's pull some cigarettes out of thin air and get to stair-dancing, shall we?

Joker's reviews have always been mixed

Something to remember here is that Joker-aversion is hardly new. When the first movie came out, both The New York Times and Roger Ebert panned it, though neither quite as devastatingly as Letterboxd reviewer Joao, who wrote simply "if you’ve never swam in the ocean then of course a pool seems deep," which is, fun fact, the first film review to be scientifically classified as nuclear. Just saying: if anyone said something that savage about a thing I was doing, I would simply no longer be doing it. 

Even before that first movie came out, folks were already upset about it. Some (like these LA Times critics), because they argued the movie may spark real-world violence, which turned to not be true. Others, because of the movie's director, Todd Phillips, who earned ire for calling the film a "real movie" under the "guise" of a comic book film (appearing to separate the two), and for saying that he no longer made comedies because of "this woke culture."

Here I'll remind you, as my best friend Conner once reminded me, that Joker came out the same year as Jojo Rabbit, the award-winning blockbuster comedy starring Taika Waititi as Adolf Hitler.

Joker's 2019 box office & Oscars success

Despite its detractors - past, present, and future - Joker was, however, an absolute triumph in several ways. It grossed a total of $1.079 billion at the box office, making it the first R-rated film to cross the coveted billion-dollar mark, and the only one to do so until this year's Deadpool & Wolverine. Then, star Joaquin Phoenix took Academy Award for Best Actor at that year's Oscars, a decision which even some the film's critics (perhaps begrudgingly) agreed with.

Besides all that, Joker did something that was perhaps more impressive than these tangible achievements. That is, it proved that CGI-heavy, chosen-hero action stories are not the only way to make a comic book film, even in the Marvel-dominated cinema landscape. Yes, Todd Phillips's "real movie" comment came off as insulting, but if the point he was making was that comic book ingredients could make a different movie recipe, then we have to admit he succeeded.

That's an idea that's difficult to reckon with, especially for those of us with problems (legitimate or not) with Joker as a film. So I submit this to you, dear reader: did we take those difficulties into how we approached its sequel? Were we actually waiting to view the second Joker as a movie, or as a cathartic balancing of scales, a sort of receptacle of negativity that we felt the first movie should have been? Is that why we wanted Joker: Folie à Deux to fail?

Maybe. Then again, perhaps audiences were prepared to give Joker 2 the cold shoulder for an easier reason: simple superhero fatigue. Maybe critics (and some audiences) are so sick of comic book fare these days that every new one is going to have them rolling their eyes. Although if that's the case, one has to wonder why people were rooting for the The Penguin - another gritty Gotham drama - to succeed, as indeed it has. Could it be that Penguin avoided the sins of its brother-in-Batmanlessness?

Let me check Reddit and get back to you.

Not to brag or anything, but New York Comic Con on Thursday, October 17 is where you’ll get an extended sneak peek at episode 5 of HBO’s The Penguin before anyone else. Not to mention, Colin Farrel will be discussing all the limited series’ juicy details with the cast and crew live. Limited Thursday NYCC 2024 tickets are still on sale.