[Editor’s note: The following article contains spoilers for “Joker: Folie à Deux.”]
Hollywood is still reeling over why “Joker: Folie à Deux,” expected to be a sure-thing blockbuster, has not just struggled at the box office but has become one of the biggest bombs of the year.
It’s led to a lot of uncomfortable questions. And like Arthur Fleck bleeding out at the end of the film, the “Joker” sequel now seems to be dying a slow, painful death.
Hollywood trades have pointed the fingers at director Todd Phillips, at Warner Bros. Pictures film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, at the dance sequences Joaquin Phoenix literally dreamed up, and at the film’s quality itself for what the heck could’ve gone wrong. Reviews when it premiered at Venice — after the first “Joker” won the Golden Lion in 2019 no less — were dismal from the get go, but it would not be the first blockbuster or superhero movie to wind up being critic proof.
With anything that has a fervent fan base, you’d expect that even a critically panned movie would have some fanboys bending over backwards to explain why “Joker 2” is actually a masterpiece, but that hasn’t happened here, or at least not in any meaningful way. The fans just didn’t show up.
So what did they know that Hollywood insiders didn’t?
The $37.6 million opening for the “Joker” sequel — against a $200 million production budget and another $100 million in marketing — is far worse than even the most conservative estimates would’ve guessed. Had the film cost half that and not nearly four times the budget of the original, the knives might not be out for it the same way. But the numbers are bad whatever way you spin it. Opening night Thursday preview grosses were half what they were for the original “Joker,” and the drop from Friday to Saturday and Saturday to Sunday (and Sunday to Monday and beyond) was bleak, suggesting word of mouth was bad, bad, bad. It could be on pace to have the worst Week 2 drop ever.
The “D” CinemaScore doesn’t mean anything to general audiences, but it is the worst ever for a superhero movie, even worse than the so-bad-it’s-good “Madame Web” (C+) from earlier this year. It all adds up to suggest that audiences didn’t just shrug at “Joker 2;” they actively disliked it.
The Rotten Tomatoes Popcorn Meter, usually a good barometer for audience reaction and the sort of thing people love to point to when they want to say critics are out of touch, is even lower (31 percent) than the rotten Tomatometer score from the critics (33 percent). Its IMDB score is an ugly 5.3 out of 10, with over 12,000 1-star votes. The original “Joker” is currently #83 on the IMDB Top 250.
Variety reported that a big reason for the fan disconnect could be that Phillips has distanced himself from DC and DC Studios as led by James Gunn and Peter Safran. The trade reported the director had a unique carve-out in his deal that allowed him to avoid oversight from the powers that be at DC in terms of giving notes designed to protect the brand. There’s no in-fighting or bad blood here as IndieWire understands it, but the first film at least had the input of former DC head Walter Hamada. Phillips was given free rein here, and Gunn and Safran aren’t credited.
Phillips, according to reports in Variety and THR, also had final cut. He insisted upon filming in Los Angeles (driving up the budget in the process). He wanted the film to return to Venice for its world premiere. And he didn’t hold any test screenings for the film — not to general audiences nor even to sycophantic superhero fans. IndieWire hears the consensus around town is that not testing it was a “mistake.” Had the film screened for even friends and family, it could’ve informed the marketing and swayed the decision about taking a polarizing film to a festival.
So the first — and only reactions — anyone saw about “Joker” for six weeks before its release were about how terrible it was. IndieWire called it “intentionally bad,” and Rolling Stone said the film has a message to fans: “Go F-ck Yourselves.” That gap between its premiere and its release worked in the favor of the original, but not here. A source said the studio also didn’t go into panic mode after those bad reviews and drastically alter the marketing approach. But taking it to Venice signals the studio thought it has a sure-fire Oscar contender, and another source wondered if withholding a premiere and piquing fans’ curiosity a little longer could’ve netted a few more million opening weekend.
Warner Bros. had no comment for this piece.
The movie was so disconnected from DC Studios that the opening credits do not bare the DC Studios or the regular DC logo (it appears in the end credits). This shouldn’t have completely been news. The first “Joker” wasn’t canon, Gunn and Safran took the DC Studios job after “Joker 2” was greenlit, and they previously said it would carry the “Elseworlds” banner.
Did anyone notice or care? Oh, they noticed. When a fan asked Gunn on Twitter what gives, he said simply, “Because it’s not a DC Studios film.”
Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav was clear about his vision for DC: “There’s not going to be four Batmans” any longer. People knew that wouldn’t help the fates of “The Flash” or “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which also both bombed, but “Folie à Deux” should’ve been the exception to the rule.
People have known for a while too the film would be a musical, at least in some capacity, even if they weren’t expecting full blown Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers numbers atop Hotel Arkham. They were maybe less prepared that the bulk of the film would be a courtroom drama with little to no action sequences. But it’s the ending that has really rubbed people the wrong way.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” sees Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck shedding the Joker persona, with him admitting that “there is no Joker” but is merely a character he plays. The character’s tragedy is that even his beloved Harleen Quinzell — who may or may not be carrying Fleck’s baby — only cared for the guy in clown makeup, not Arthur Fleck himself, and he’s forced to suffer the same fate as the idol he assassinated in the first movie.
Many critics have read this as a repudiation of fans who probably got the wrong idea from “Joker” and turned the character into a martyr and anti-hero for the wronged and downtrodden. You liked the first movie? Well here’s a slow art film that ends with the message that everything you thought was wrong. There are a few who would argue that’s exactly why it should be celebrated, or at least that the idea is a good one, if not executed well.
But without those other fan reactions bubbling ahead of its release allowing that more positive word of mouth to take over, the most ardent and dedicated fanboys wound up tuning it out completely.
Cue the sad laughter.
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