Academy Award-nominated director Todd Phillips and his new sequel Joker: Folie à Deux Ask the boldest question: What if the most annoying man you know had an equally annoying girlfriend? And if they sang show tunes to each other? And if you were to see?
The man in question is one Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the social outcast turned serial killer of 2019. the jokerwho is in jail awaiting trial after the incident in the first film. The girlfriend is a Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), a woman with a masters in psychiatry and an obsession with Fleck, who locks herself away to better hold him back. Harley Quinn and the Joker’s toxically codependent relationship has existed in the Batverse for decades – for the first time Batman: The Animated Seriess 1992 – and the former Doctor and the one-time patient who drove him insane have been explored throughout comics, movies and TV. In Phillips’ new film, however, their entanglement is rewritten to be more grim and, frankly, flat (especially Quinn’s arc), but with much more music.
Yes, although he hates to tell anyone, Phillips has also managed to make a movie musical about the Joker’s murder trial. On paper, making a supervillain movie that doesn’t involve setting a city on fire or threatening the world is as destructive as a director. Perhaps ignoring the strict guidelines that come with franchise filmmaking and the demands of Warner Bros. and then throwing in song and dance? Here was the potential for something truly devastating.
But as Fleck reminds us, some people don’t want change, but plain misery. For two hours and 20 minutes Joker: Folie à DeuxPhillips shows us how.
don’t be stupid Joker 2 Actually a musical instrument
Following a trend like movies I mean girls And WonkaBehind the marketing and creative team Joker: Folie à Deux, aka Joker 2there is abstinence The movie is a musical (a choice forthcoming wicked also seems to be in the making). Some of that ambiguity may be a conscious effort not to isolate the jokerits original audience, but it may also be based on the assumption that movie-going audiences don’t like musicals. I mean girls And Wonka Not selling themselves as musical instruments, and they were Considered Box office success — Meanwhile obvious musical instruments viz West Side Story Revival and at height overwhelmed
It said, and reluctantly, Joker 2 It’s a movie musical – tries to be too edgy at times.
Phillips uses music as a very obvious, if not very sensitive, storytelling device. Throughout the film, Fleck’s sanity is questioned. Everyone from judges to doctors talk about her living in a “fantasy world.” Enter: song and dance. Movie numbers from “Get Happy” to the Carpenters’ “Close to You” serve as glimpses into Fleck’s longings, fears and mental illness.
The man’s surreal inner life can only be glimpsed through his delirious hallucinations, where we find a glossy, glittery version of his trauma and mental illness.
These moments allow Lady Gaga to take off her pop star mask and show us Stephanie GermanottaTheater Kid He’s good — especially when Flake imagines himself and Hurley as a sort of chaotic Sonny and Cher duo. Gaga’s committed, gritty performance proves there’s room for another Judy Garland biopic as long as she can audition.
Phoenix, on the other hand, fights and screams through his numbers.
The result sounds like a big bird harassing another small bird. Phoenix’s vocal performance is knowingly bad, especially when you consider that this guy won an Oscar for his performance in Johnny Cash. walk the line. Perhaps Phillips believed his audience wouldn’t be able to fully understand how upset Flake was when he sounded smooth and pleasant in his own imagination, but Phoenix deliberately made him incongruous. After three or so songs, singing feels like a bit of a petty punishment. I think that’s the point: being in the Joker’s head is supposed to be an unpleasant experience. I just wanted to be unpleasant in a different way.
Imagine if you took away all the fun my cousin vinny, Then you have Joker 2
The most confusing element Joker 2 It’s not that it’s a musical instrument; It is a courtroom procedure. Although there is a rich cinematic history Clowns and their girlfriends In the courtroom, it’s not a choice that makes for an exciting film.
At the heart of these two hours and 20 minutes The movie questions whether Arthur Flake, aka the Joker, is insane and if the Joker is real. His attorney (played by Catherine Keener) claims as a defense strategy that when Flake killed the five people, he had dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. (The police don’t know Flake killed his own mother, making the body count six.) The Joker is another figure, and so Flake cannot be held responsible. Prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lotte) – the man who would become the Batman villain known as Two-Face – argues that Flake and the Joker are one and the same: a violently deranged killer.
Seeing Flake in jail awaiting trial or going back to jail awaiting trial just doesn’t make for a thrilling scene. Dissociative identity disorder as a legal argument is kind of compelling but less so when it’s all happening. (It’s also important to note that despite some media portrayals, people with DID are no more violent than the general population.) Courtroom procedures need some sort of twist or some sort of build-up to enhance the drama. Starting with all the cards on the table — whether Arthur Flake is guilty of the Joker or not — just takes the wind out of the genre.
Maybe that’s why it’s a musical?
As a character who has been an icon since the 1960s, the Joker was created to terrorize Gotham City. The Joker wasn’t created to sit in jail talking legal tricks with his lawyer. There’s a reason so many Batman comics and adaptations have a jailbreak scene. Batman’s villains are more interesting when they’re committing crimes!
Phillips seems to want to make a big deal about how the scariest part of the character is the Joker’s influence on the citizens of Gotham. If Flake is allowed to be the Joker, what’s stopping everyone else in town from being the Joker? If Flake is declared legally insane, how can the laws of Gotham keep people safe? If no one can be blamed for the murder, it doesn’t matter how strong Gotham’s police force is; It doesn’t even matter how powerful its heroes are. But aside from the large crowd outside the courtroom, some wearing Joker masks, Phillips doesn’t really show us what’s going on in Gotham. We aren’t really made to understand the Joker’s judgments, even if they are the destruction of a civilized society.
Worse, Phillips has intentionally or unintentionally created a grotesque, ridiculous version of it My cousin Vinny. In the 1992 classic, a clown and his Italian girlfriend are the only people who stand in the way of a mixed-up town convicted of a pair of murders. In Joker 2A clown and his Italian-ish girlfriend are the only people who stand in the way of a mixed-up town convicted of murder. Now, imagine if Marisa Tomei wasn’t charming, the clown wasn’t funny, and there were no twists, no turns, and a 1963 Pontiac Tempest with its independent rear suspension. Your dignity, that sweet, wretched thing Joker 2.
