Jukebox Tragedy

I didn’t like the first Joker. I found it to be a dull, depressing, wallowing bit of cinema with no moral perspective and a character that ended up irredeemable. While I don’t always need a lot from my movies, I do require something of a character arc, some sort of plot to string it all together. What I found in Joker was a film that wanted to justify its own antihero’s existence, but all it really managed was to commit a kind of MRA, alt-right screed upon the screen. I know others saw the film differently, and that is naturally the power of cinema – you see what you want and you take what you can from a piece of art – but that’s what Joker did for me and it made for a viewing experience I absolutely hated.

Suffice it to say that I was perfectly fine with the production team’s original plan to leave the film as a one and done. Produced on a budget of $70 Mil, if the film had made $200 or $300 Mil it would have been a financial success but not something that absolutely would have screamed (in studio logic) to have a sequel. But it didn’t make that much, it made over a Billion dollars at the Box Office, and that’s the kind of money studios can’t leave on the table. Despite the original film being self-contained, despite no plan originally existing for how to carry the character of Arthur Fleck (aka The Joker) on, Warner Bros. green-lit a sequel.

Now, had Warners kept the sequel to a modest budget like the first film (and in studio logic, $70 Mil is “modest”) that would have been fine. Whether the sequel was successful or not, it probably could have made that money back and drifted off into that good night. But as we all have likely heard, the sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, was not made on a modest budget. Warners gave writer / director Todd Phillips $200 Mil to make his vision of a Joker sequel, assuming that anything that came next would have to make another Billion at the Box Office. That’s just logical, right? Well, Warners was wrong because no one wanted this sequel and it tanked at the Box Office, bringing in a worldwide total of just $206.4 Mil. Accounting for theater share, advertising budgets, and more, Warners likely lost over $130 Mil making this ill-conceived second picture.

What was it about Joker: Folie à Deux that drove audiences away? Well, for starters the same group of fans that loved the first film have slowly turned against the film over the last five years. Critical reception to the first film was mixed, and audiences eventually felt the same way. There just wasn’t a fan outpouring of desire to see the further, sad adventures of Arthur Fleck. And, had there been a desire for that, it probably should have come out a year or two after the first film, when fans were still buzzing, not half a decade later when everyone has moved on.

But beyond that simple fact, there’s a bigger reason Joker: Folie à Deux failed to meet WB’s expectations: it’s not a very good movie. It has solid actors in it, it’s very handsomely filmed, and it clearly had a lot of time, care, and consideration put into the production. At its core, though, the film can’t justify its own existence. It has two fatal flaws that hold it back from being even moderately watchable: it has barely any story, and what is there is stretched over a two-plus-hours runtime; and it’s the jukebox musical that nobody asked for.

The film focuses on Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) two years after he committed the various murders in the first film. Stuck in Arkham, awaiting trial, Arthur is withdrawn, distant, and quiet. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), wants to put on a defense that Arthur wasn’t of sound mind when he committed the killings, that the Joker is a dissociative personality in his head, that Joker was the killer and Arthur is just a sick man that needs help. And it seems like this could be a defense that would actually work, right up until Arthur meets someone in the institution: Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga).

Lee, as we eventually learn, had herself committed to Arkham because she’s something of a Joker groupie. She loves him for what he did, for the statement he made on live TV, for the murders and his unrepentant nature. She convinces him to give into that side of him, to be the deranged man she fell for, assuming that if he embraces his nature he’ll somehow get let off the hook and can walk away a free man. So he fires his lawyer, puts on his own defense, and, likely, blows up everything that might have saved his life. Just another tragedy in Arthurs sad existence.

Joker: Folie à Deux is not a happy movie by any stretch, but then you wouldn’t expect that if you saw the first film. In many ways it feels like a counter-argument to its own predecessor, a creation by Phillips and his team to strike back against the commentators (like myself) that said the first film glorified the Joker and his actions (which it did). This film seems to argue that the Joker is not an antihero, he’s a sick and sad man who was not justified in his own actions. Whatever he did, he did it himself, and we shouldn’t glorify him at all. This is an argument I can respect, but it does also mean that those fans that loved the first film for it’s “message” likely weren’t going to like this sequel anyway. This is a poke in the eye to them even if it justifies what all the rest of us were saying.

Were that all it did, and if it could have done that in 90 minutes or less, I probably would have liked this film a lot more. But Joker: Folie à Deux is so padded and bloated that it’s hard to sit through the film at all. The core story can be told quickly, and in fact the film barely pays attention to its own story for whole stretches, going on narrative flights of fancy between Arthur and Lee just to drag everything out. Arthur has to come to terms with what he did and who he really is, and that’s a solid storyline. It just takes so long for the film to get there that, frankly, I’m sure most people sitting down for the film got bored before they reached that conclusion.

What really drags the film down, though, was the idea to turn it into a jukebox musical. It’s a weird idea to start since Joker ‘19 wasn’t a musical at all. It didn’t have these kinds of flights of fancy, it didn’t show Arthur retreating into some kind of musical world. This is a weird flex, a retcon that comes out of nowhere in the scope of the films, and it absolutely feels out of place in the film. It doesn’t help that Phoenix plays Arthur a specific way, and his rasping, oddly tilted voice sounds terrible when he’s trying to belt out songs. This was a bad idea from the get go.

The one aspect I do respect is that the film tries to justify shoe-horning in the music. Early in the film when Arthur meets Lee, he does so at a musical therapy session at the institution. They’re told that music can help them free the expressions within themselves, and it’s from this point forward that Arthur starts imagining his romance with Lee in song. This was an interesting way to work the music in, and it lets the film try and give Arthur a means to show himself through his internalized music. It still sucks, and the music absolutely drags the film down and stretches everything out, but I at least respect the effort that was put in to try and make it work in the context of the film. Just, deep down, they shouldn’t have tried.

And this leads to the conclusion of the film, a storyline that (without spoiling it) essentially feels like an addendum to the first movie. This wasn’t a sequel that absolutely had to be made. If the producers wanted to do a second film set in this world, Arthur’s story could have simply been a footnote, some footage of the trail played on TVs in the background while some other agent-of-chaos villain stalked the streets. That wasn’t what was done, but that’s about all of the story we’re really given here. When your story can be reduced to a few soundbites in someone else’s tale, it shows how little was actually accomplished in your movie.

Joker: Folie à Deux is not a good film. It doesn’t even manage to justify its own existence. It’s a bloated, ill-conceived, unnecessary sequel that no one asked for that came out long after any hope or buzz for a sequel had dissipated. But it’s worst sin, above all else, is that it’s just boring. Good or bad, Joker ‘19 at least had energy and it made you take notice. No one noticed Joker: Folie à Deux and no one cared.