Joker: Tired of Madness

At the beginning of October, the psychological drama-musical based on DC Comics, Joker: Folie à Deux, directed by Todd Phillips (Starsky & Hutch, The Hangover), was released. This film became the second, initially unplanned sequel to Joker, which had considerable success at the box office. The premiere of the sequel took place in September at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, where it received predominantly neutral or negative reviews from critics.

After its wide release, no miracle happened – the audience aligned with the critics and deemed the film a clear failure, which reflected in its steadily declining ratings: currently, 33% freshness on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregator. In essence, this can already be considered a flop, even though the sequel had all the components for box office success: the brilliant Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role, bolstered by a decent actress and pop star Lady Gaga, plus the musical genre, which American directors traditionally excel at. So, what went wrong?

In principle, everything. It’s important to begin with DC Comics' initial ambition to install its characters in "serious auteur cinema." Yes, the DC superhero universe continues its expansion into big cinema, alternating between rare successes (such as the first Joker or Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy) and a large number of mediocre or outright weak films (The Suicide Squad 2, Justice League), but damn it, counting on the idea that every comic book antihero has a place in arthouse drama seems somewhat naive. Phillips managed to pull it off once, and Nolan partly did the same trick, but these are rather exceptions. Nevertheless, the DC Black film series has already been planned by Warner Bros marketers, so there’s more to come...

The second failure of Joker is its reliance on a good actor despite a frankly weak and derivative script. There is nothing wrong with combining a courtroom procedural with a musical when both seemingly incompatible genres harmoniously complement each other, and their plotlines are interesting in their own right. In this case, the "courtroom" part of the second Joker turned out to be a banal retelling of the events of the first film, adding nothing new (what did the new character Harvey Dent, another villain from the Batman saga, bring to the sequel? – nothing), and the musical numbers, given Lady Gaga’s potential, looked cute but poor and ultimately boring. As for Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, one of the most talented actors of his generation, it is, of course, top-notch, but the problem lies elsewhere – Phoenix has nothing to play. His character does not develop at all, merely regurgitating and reflecting on the events of the first part, only to renounce himself at the end, negating the simple but effective ideas that were laid out in the first Joker.

This is not the first film that a good actor's performance could not save – in 2023, Phoenix played Napoleon in Ridley Scott’s eponymous film, which was criticised by French film scholars, and overall, critics could only praise the picture for its spectacular battle scenes.

Much the same happens with Lady Gaga’s character, who takes on the role of Harley Quinn – the actress and singer’s talents in Folie à Deux are used minimally. In the script’s interpretation, her character is not an Arkham psychiatrist but simply a rich, eccentric woman who, for some reason, is interested in Joker – for his sake, she voluntarily comes to Arkham for treatment, and just as voluntarily leaves when the suffering Arthur Fleck/Joker decides to renounce his alter ego. Yes, Harley is in love with Joker for a while, but this practically does not move the plot, nor does the fact that she was a psychologist in the past.

It’s also possible that Folie à Deux became a victim of inflated expectations and creative compromise – one way or another, the first Joker became a significant event, and Phoenix won an Oscar for his role, but Todd Phillips did not plan to make a sequel, so the story of the outcast clown was complete and did not foresee any development.

Source:  Warner Bros

And finally, the last reason, surprisingly enough, is political, which contributes to Joker: Folie à Deux failing at the box office. The phenomenon of antiheroes taking the spotlight in pop culture over the past few decades did not arise in a vacuum. The indoctrination of Western society with ultra-left ideology, coupled with the impotence of Western democracies and the "world's policeman" in the form of the US against Eastern despotisms, has made the world look at the cult comic book fighters against global evil in a new light. Superman, Batman, Tony Stark, and all the Avengers now, in the face of the obvious triumph of dictatorial regimes and growing military aggression, seem utterly discredited. It’s impossible to take the story of the invincible Superman or Spider-Man seriously when the country they represent as a collective image has been reluctant for three years to seriously challenge the weak, psychopathic, hydrocarbon-exporting totalitarian regime of President Putin or the Iranian fundamentalists. Watching the exploits of on-screen superheroes, one wants to ask a banal question: where have you been for the last 10 years while Russia in the centre of Europe was swallowing the territory of a foreign sovereign state? Fighting the Green Goblin and Bane in fictional American metropolises? Well, okay...

That’s why the main suppliers of modern superhero epics, Marvel and DC Comics, shyly sweep the muscular guys in tight suits under the rug, offering the audience an alternative entertainment – digging into the minds of psychopaths in search of "their truth" and justifying their villainous nature. If, heaven forbid, Fyodor Dostoevsky were alive today, he would be one of the most sought-after screenwriter-showrunners in the service of Marvel and DC Comics. Venom, Morbius, Joker, the outsider bandits from The Suicide Squad – now, for the most part, they solve problems and protect the weak, reflecting on their psychological issues and embodying the dichotomy of "part of that force which ever seeks to do evil, and ever does good."

Leftist narratives that explain to the Western audience why, for example, one should sympathise with the terrorists from Hamas and Hezbollah (who deliberately hide behind the backs of the residents of Gaza and other cities involved in the Middle East war) are wonderfully supported by films like the first Joker, where madness, narcissistic psychopathy, and a propensity for violence are explained by "the social injustice of the Western world order." And while Western society suffers from boredom and does not associate its life with that of its closest neighbours, already embroiled in a full-scale war, the cult of antiheroes will continue to expand and grow. However, the failure of the second Joker may signal that the Western public is slowly starting to wake up and look around, not through the prism of ultra-left optics, but with a naked eye. The world has gone mad, so the need for mad heroes is gradually becoming irrelevant. And what the audience sees around them is starting to frighten and finally makes them think: is it really necessary to delve so deeply into the motivation of terrorists, murderers, and psychopaths, or perhaps it’s time to deal with them the old-fashioned way, with a Colt and a straitjacket?