close
close

The biggest surprise of “Joker: Folie à Deux” is the repeat of a controversial Marvel moment

Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux.

This is sure to be one of the most controversial releases of the year. Joker: Folie à Deux is now in the cinema. The sequel to the 2019 hit will once again be directed by Todd Phillips, but this time he doesn't seem to be receiving such a warm reception. IGN's Siddhant Adlakha gave the film an award 5/10 in his reviewand many other critics agree with him. The DC sequel has been criticized for its slow pacing, unfocused tone, poorly staged musical sequences, and criminal underutilization of Lady Gaga, making one wonder why they even bothered paying for her role in the film. But perhaps the worst part is the how The twist ending of Joker 2 makes both this film and its predecessor kind of pointless.

We'll get to the twist in a moment, but Joker: Folie à Deux feels like a film at war with itself. It's a Joker movie that isn't really a Joker movie in the end, and a musical that isn't really a musical in the end. It works backwards, trying to present itself above the genre and franchise it's adapting, only to end up falling by the wayside. Let's take a look at why Joker: Folie à Deux's biggest surprise is also its most frustrating aspect.

Will the real Joker please stand up?

It turns out Todd Phillips wasn't a joke when he said that Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck would never become the Clown Prince of Crime. The big twist at the end of Joker: Folie à Deux is that Arthur Fleck is actually not the Joker. While representing himself in court for the murders he committed in the last film, Fleck admits that the Joker personality is not really a separate personality and that he is actually responsible for his actions. This disillusions Lady Gaga's Harley Quinn, causing her to give up on him (she was in love with Joker, not Fleck), and leaves him sad and alone as he returns to death row after being captured again after someone (we learn never who) bombed the courthouse Most of the movie takes place in. The other part of the ending? Arthur Fleck is dead. Not because he was executed, but because he was killed real Joker.

Yes, really. A nameless background inmate at Arkham (played by Connor Storrie), who has no lines until the final scene, stabs Arthur repeatedly before giving himself a Glaswegian smile as Arthur dies. Even if it's not said out loud, the clear idea at play here is that this prisoner killing Arthur is part of his own origin story as the future clown prince of crime, which doesn't exactly make it bizarre for two entire films to spend on the figure. Despite the awards, the first film was criticized for feeling like a shameless rip-off of Martin Scorsese films, particularly The King of Comedy, with which it shares most of the plot (and which is a great film). , which you definitely shouldn't watch). The counter-argument from some, however, has been that in Hollywood's current “IP or Nothing” mentality, filmmakers like Phillips who want to make character pieces have to sneak them into franchise vehicles like a Joker origin film to even make them happen.

Aside from the fact that it's doubtful how effective these “character pieces” are when, after two films, Fleck still doesn't feel like he's a particularly deep character, the second film reacts to this situation like a tantrum. Regardless of whether Phillips has said he wants to make Joker 2 or not, he spends the entire sequel re-engineering the last film and then torching the franchise on the way out. Nothing significant happens until Fleck's death. So what was the point of it all? Even the title “Folie à Deux,” which roughly translates to “Madness for Two” in French, is a misnomer, as the relationship between Fleck and Harley isn’t seen on screen as often as one would think. They never go out in public together as Joker and Harley, as they do in the marketing, as Fleck spends almost the entire film in prison. Ultimately, this twist reminds us of another famous superhero movie that executed the whole idea far better than Folie à Deux.

Iron Man 3 and the Mandarin Twist

Iron Man 3 is a great film and remains one of the best films in the MCU due to its strong directorial vision Best character test of Tony Stark in the franchise and its consistent thematic approach of critiquing post-9/11 War on Terror scaremongering as a function of the US military-industrial complex. To illustrate this, director Shane Black reimagined Iron Man's main nemesis from the comics: The Mandarinas a deception concocted by Aldrich Killian to provide a convenient cover story for his Extremis test subjects, who keep exploding. The Mandarin was actually actor Trevor Slattery, which is hilarious once revealed, but many comic fans were frustrated by the fakery as they were hoping for a more accurate portrayal of the character, especially since the trailers were heavy on Ben Kingsley's Interpretation of the figure were oriented role.

I'm not here to tell the fans they were wrong for thinking that. I love the comics too, guys. But the fact remains that of all the sworn enemies of Marvel's greatest heroes, the Mandarin has always been the odd one out of the group. While Doctor Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, The Red Skull and Loki have survived decades of comics and adaptations, the Mandarin's racist origins as a Yellow Peril stereotype and lack of an iconic story arc of all time to his name (albeit that of John Byrne). Dragon Seed Saga is pretty good) meant he was exactly the kind of character who could be reimagined in this way. It was a subversion of expectations, but it was done for a specific artistic reason: to remove the uncomfortable context from the Mandarin's conception and make the film a critique of the cultural apparatus that creates villains like him around other nations and ethnicities to demonize in this way that people in real life are a little more receptive to the US military – or any other military – invading and occupying their country.

The revelation that Arthur isn't the Joker just seems like an insult to the audience.

Folie à Deux, on the other hand, does not have such high ambitions. The revelation that Arthur is not the Joker, followed by his subsequent death, reads only as an insult to the audience, an angry protest from the filmmakers that they were forced to make comic book adaptations (despite the millions they received in compensation ), if they wanted to, they would rather make “real” films. The problem, however, is that Phillips' attempts to emulate more acclaimed films in script and cinematography are empty gestures that only serve to further illustrate how unsuited he is to non-comedic material. The ending is dramatically unsatisfying on its own and does not convey that the director would be a good fit for the films he is copying. This empty, self-hating attitude colors the rest of the film, making it one of the biggest failures of the year.

Face the music

Aside from the twist, the other big conceit is that Folie à Deux is also a musical. Turning, of all things, a Joker sequel into a jukebox musical is the kind of creative flourish that, in the right hands, could have made for a fascinating film. Instead, “Folie à Deux” contains many scenes where the characters actually sing, but the filmmakers do nothing to back it up. Since Phillips doesn't know how to shoot a musical, he simply continues to use the faux-dark camerawork he uses in the rest of the picture, making the musical sequences dull because they lack the color or energy that musicals need to convey the heightened emotional appeal Tone to achieve the genre demands.

The film downplays its musical elements, just as it downplays its comic book origins. Lady Gaga, one of the most popular singers in the world, got paid 12 million dollars to star in the film, but she did not compose an original song for the soundtrack, nor is she given a major power ballad among the covers. Her singing is such an inconsequential part of the film that she had to do her own part Accompanying album to get the energy out of their system. This all leads back to the question: Why? Why make a Joker sequel if it would make itself and the previous film a waste of time? Why make it a musical if you weren't going to shoot it that way? Why would you hire Lady Gaga if you don't want to put her in the spotlight for singing, which is literally the main job you're hiring Lady Gaga for?

Once again, it's an attitude problem. “Folie à Deux” is the latest movie musical that you don’t even want to know is a musical before you enter the theater. Even Gaga said publicly that it wasn't one on the press tour. Every genre and style that Folie à Deux throws into the blender is treated this way. It's a comic adaptation that doesn't want to be a comic adaptation, a musical that doesn't know how to be a musical, a courtroom drama that's too boring to work as a courtroom drama, a romance film that doesn't spend enough money Time for the love story and a character study that forgets to give the main character enough dimension to study. It's a film that consists entirely of things it doesn't want to be, without ever figuring out what it actually is. At a time when we're looking at a new future for DC films with James Gunn's upcoming Superman reboot, it would be in all of our best interests to leave films like Folie à Deux in the past.

Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations Twitter.

You may also like...