I was filled with excitement going into the theater to watch the new Joker movie, but left with a dissatisfied taste. It wasn’t the popcorn, but instead the underwhelmed feeling left by a bad movie.
How come the sequel feels so different? In contrast, part two’s genre is a musical because of the addition of Harley Quinn played by Lady Gaga, who is Joker’s love interest. It changes the mood of the film in a bunch of ways. The first one was set to be a psychological thriller. Just focusing on a psychological thriller is what made the first Joker so great. It plays into the character, a psychopathic clown. It followed his life and showed why he’s so dark. What changed in his life that destroyed a lot of morals for him. It was the world.
A huge message in the movie is the world changed him, and we were shown this. Joker: Folie a Deux doesn’t give it justice. Musicals don’t make a movie bad, it’s how you pace and add them into the film. It doesn’t do this right. At some points you forget the previous scene or you’re left wondering why the music was even in here? What message did it convey? It’s hard to top the original nonetheless. It’s a great film, but switching up the entire genre is a bad way to start.
The movie is also dull. It has no exciting parts or good twists or anything. It is exciting when someone pops up or a new side plot happens but when a movie is completely linear it’s not fun. Lady Gaga is the new big star other than Joaquin Phoenix. She adds a new layer to the film but also makes it take 2 steps back. The Joker adaptation is steering even further from what Joker actually is in the comics.
Joker: Folie a Deux had a budget of 200 million dollars. $190 million dollars had been made so far over a 3 week period. That’s terrible, for a movie to be made. Not even beating its budget, making it a loss of money.
IMDb rates it a 5.3 and Rotten Tomatoes says it’s 32%. It came out on October 4, 2024. It was produced by Warner Bros. It will begin streaming on October 29, 2024. It is considered a flop. What had high expectations fell short. Some were even speculating the film would be bad from the first trailer which came out on April 9th! Hopefully next time DC blesses us with a film that beats our expectations.
