Joker: Folie a Deux - The Sequel Nobody Wanted

wow I guess time really does make fools of us all the first Joker movie was one of those rare moments of cinematic Serendipity where everything that should have been wrong somehow came together to become absolutely right a lowbudget origin story about a Batman villain that nobody asked for directed by a guy best known for making comedies that proed the law of diminishing returns and shadowed by media accusations of promoting violence misogyny and generalized buffoonery it was a film that seemingly had everything going against it but some somehow turned out way better than it had any

right to be in a sea of oversaturated CGI sludge The Joker dared to tell a small intimate complex story of a man pushed into madness and despair by a society that was blindly indifferent to him a movie with a wonderfully unreliable narrator driven by a superb performance by Wakim Phoenix and an ending that left the audience with more questions than answers it was a perfect oneandone movie that told its story and told it well no need to do anything more with a character like that because it would just cheapen The Experience so like the rest

of you I was a bit perplexed when I find out that joker was getting a sequel and even more concerned when it was announced as a musical co-star in Lady Gaga but just like everyone else I tried to suppress my doubts and ignore that nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that this movie was fundamentally a bad idea surely to goodness Todd Phillips knows what he's doing and wouldn't just sh out some lame cash grab sequel that undermines the Integrity of the original right wrong then I sat down and watched it and if all

two and a half hours of Joker F proves anything at all it's that sometimes you really ought to listen to your instincts yeah there's definitely good elements in there you can see that talented people were working on this movie and the ending is definitely going to get people talking but overall Joker 2 felt like a dull bloated and ultimately unnecessary movie that failed to answer the question that's dogged it since the beginning why does this film even exist now I know it's just come out and I don't want to spoil it for people so I'm

going to keep my plot summary short and sweet unlike this [ __ ] movie so with that in mind let's go the story picks up shortly after the events of the first film where Arthur Fleck has been arrested and locked up in Arkham Asylum while he awaits trial for all the murders that he committed his lawyer wants to plead Insanity while the prosecutor Harvey Dent's pushing for the death penalty bad times indeed but while he's at Arkham he meets a young woman named Lee Quinn and soon starts a bit of a romance with her but

is it really Arthur that she's into or is Joker personality and what's her true motivation for being there well you'll have to wait and find out anyway the case goes to trial and Arthur's soon confronted by the reality of what he did in the first film by going over most of the key events again but how responsible was he for what happened was the Joker really a split personality that took over him or just part of him all along and what will Harley Quinn think of him when she finds out the truth Joker 2 is

kind of a frustrating movie to watch because in a lot of ways I can see how hard many of the people involved are trying to make it work Wakee Phoenix delivers the same intense compelling performance as the first movie arguably a bit too similar but we'll get into that one in a minute the point is though he's definitely given the role his all and some of his scenes are genuinely compelling Lady Gaga much to my surprise also turns in a good performance as a crazy Super Fan enamored by the flamboyant Persona of the Joker rather

than the Flesh and Blood Man Behind it and if you're inclined to look for themes in this film it's an interesting insight into the intoxicating danger of celebrity and the vast Gulf between myth and reality the two actors play well off each other and the kind of Twisted romance they cultivate seems pretty appropriate for a movie like this and the film even has you questioning which of their interactions even happened for real it doesn't do it as effectively as the first movie but it's something at least the thing is I'm pretty sure that the Comic

version of Quinn was more like the Joker's play thing rather than a manipulative F fatal stringing him along but again it probably fits with what we know about this version of Joker and I guess that brings me along to my criticisms the biggest of which is the deconstruction of Arthur himself the ending of the first movie saw him fully Embraces Joker Persona shed in the last remnants of his old weak victimized personality and embracing The Madness of the world around him it was a logical end point for a man who had been desperately trying to

swim against the tide for most of the film and it was kind of cathartic to see him finally let go it was a final [ __ ] you to the world that had kicked him to the ground again and again a world reduced to Fire and Chaos all of that good work seems to have been undone here because for most of the film he's reverted to the same weak timid Arthur that he was at the start of the first movie and I can't shake the feeling that there's something almost mean-spirited in that kind of deconstruction

as if they're taking a swipe at the audience themselves for liking someone they weren't supposed to I don't know man it just feels like character regression instead of development for for me then there's the musical numbers that pepper The Narrative I can't believe I'm saying this because normally I [ __ ] hate musicals but I actually kind of enjoyed the sheer spectacle and performances while I was watching them gay and Lady Gaga clearly doesn't have any trouble buting out her numbers but the more I think about it the more I see them as shiny objects

trying to distract from what's actually a pretty stodgy bloed and uninspiring drama the court room seems are basically just a dry recap of the first film telling us things that we mostly already know and destroying that awesome sense of ambiguity and unreality that made it such a fascinating story to pick apart now we know exactly what did and didn't happen and [ __ ] man it feels like such a waste and most disappointingly of all I actually found myself kind of bored and checked out at times something that absolutely never happened with the original movie

as I said before the question hanging over Joker 2 was is this a story that really needed to be told or is it just a bunch of talented people doing doing their best to elevate a studio mandated sequel into something that it isn't well now that I've seen it I'm afraid I know the answer and it's not a good one anyway that's all I've got for today go away now