Joker 1 & 2 [movie]

[Torfish]

Saw the movie over the weekend. My wife and I loved it. Don't expect a superhero movie.

Excellent movie all around including the cinematography. We already want to see it again.

[Daehawk]

Ryan Reynolds congratulates Joker on beating Deadpool 2 at the box office.

[Blackhawk]

I just got back. I really, really liked this movie. Phoenix was fantastic in it. I also thought the Batman mythos stuff was a good fit (although they might have been better off simply suggesting one particular scene.)

[morlac]

I just got back. I really, really liked this movie. Phoenix was fantastic in it. I also thought the Batman mythos stuff was a good fit (although they might have been better off simply suggesting one particular scene.)

Me and the wife loved it as well. Needs a second viewing for sure. Who knows what was real and what wasn't? That's the beauty of it, It's cannon proof this way. I saw a suggestion that this should be a 3 movie series with each one being a different Joker origin story told as a flashback but all starring Phoenix. That would be brilliant!

[Moliere]

JOKER 2: FOLIE A DEUX Trailer (2024)

[Skinypupy]

Lady Gaga used to really annoy me (back in the "meat dress" days) but it's impossible to ignore what a massively talented and all-around cool human being she is. I'm definitely interested in seeing this, mostly to watch her.

And that last shot in the trailer is amazing.

[YellowKing]

Yeah I think it looks fantastic. I loved the first one, and I'm a big Gaga fan. I used to also get a little rolly-eyes at her "weird pop star" antics but in hindsight it was all just brilliant marketing. No different than what Elton John and David Bowie were doing back in the day.

[Daehawk]

Always thought she was cool because she wrote her one music. Talented. She was put down to and made fun of so I always root for the underdog or the bullied.

[Zarathud]

I wouldn’t want my performance to be judged against Margot Robbie in her prime. Gaga is really taking risks as an actress.

[Isgrimnur]

It looks like Oscar-bait to me.

[Isgrimnur]

[gilraen]

No, thanks. Never saw the first movie, have zero interest in this one. I greatly dislike the recent trend of turning psycho villains into protagonists, and the whole thing just looks like a depressing mess.

[naednek]

looks great.

[Isgrimnur]

I'm slightly less negative after that one but still...

It looks like Oscar-bait to me.

[hepcat]

No, thanks. Never saw the first movie, have zero interest in this one. I greatly dislike the recent trend of turning psycho villains into protagonists, and the whole thing just looks like a depressing mess.

I understand and agree with that. I agree that we do have an issue with audiences identifying with the wrong characters oftentimes. But I have to wonder if that's just what Todd Phillips (a pretty savvy filmmaker usually) is trying to tell us with these films.

I did see the first one, and while you had some sympathy for what created the character, he wasn't portrayed as the hero...except to the clamoring crowds of people who were broken already. Something I think Phillips highlights in these films. I feel like he's pointing out that cults of personality are dangerous (especially in an age where isolation, loneliness and depression are running rampant) and then drawing parallels to what's happening right now in politics, social media, etc..

And to be clear: I wasn't a huge fan of the first one. And I'll probably wait for this sequel until this hits streaming before I watch it. But I will watch it and I will hope that the message I'm seeing is the one that's intended.

[Isgrimnur]

The decision to turn the sequel into a musical-slash-courtroom-drama is as perplexing as it sounds—and the results are so bad, they’re actually fascinating...

[Carpet_pissr]

Damn. Hard fail.

Was not expecting that.

[Zarathud]

It’s so crazy it didn’t work. Just like the Joker himself.

[Blackhawk]

I was wondering how they were going to sequelize it. The Joker was about the fall of a troubled man, about his descent into madness, about how he became a villain. That kind of story can only be told once.

[Smoove_B]

It feels like maybe they're trying to figure out how to re-tell / re-imagine the story that's been told so many times already and in so many different ways (primarily comics).

He's an excellent character but I do wonder if there's any value (anymore) in just trying to come up with a creative re-interpretation of what's been examined already. Welcome to capitalism, I guess.

[Max Peck]

Joker: Folie à Deux is a selfish screed for nobody

Joker sequel dares to reimagine the original — but not in a way worth watching

Locked away in the back room of a library at Princeton University in New Jersey, available for entry only to those who apply with two forms of ID and agree to be supervised by a custodian while reading, there is a small book.

In that small book, there's a short story: The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls, a standalone prequel to J.D. Salinger's sole novel, Catcher in the Rye, that explains its protagonist's muddled, often misunderstood motivations. And behind that story — behind the reason it is to remain strictly guarded and unpublished until 50 years after Salinger's death — is a fear.

The fear, expressed both by the famously reclusive author and his son, was that Salinger's fame would overshadow his work — or that it already had. The fear was that his writing had grown so popular it was impossible to judge his stories on their own merits. And that his fans' interpretation of, and obsession with, his writing had somehow robbed him of it.

"When you publish, the world thinks you owe something," Salinger, who died in 2010, said in his last interview. "If you don't publish, they don't know what you're doing. You can keep it for yourself."

It's a fear that Joker: Folie à Deux director Todd Phillips was no doubt guided by. A follow-up to his Oscar-winning Joker released exactly five years ago — which starred Joaquin Phoenix as a sort of real-world interpretation of the chaotic comic book supervillain — this latest movie is less a sequel than an epilogue. Instead of an independent production, it operates as a coda to a film that sparked debate over a romanticization of incel culture (and necessitated bans against Joker-inspired outfits and police crews posted outside screenings), and is almost completely devoid of a plot of its own.

Bouncing between the Joker's trial for killing five people in the first movie, his courting of fellow inmate and crime-groupie Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) and a pack of rabid fans rallying against some social injustice no one seems quite able to articulate, Folie à Deux doesn't bother with consistent character motivations or even a coherent story. Composed almost entirely of flashbacks, it is far more concerned with addressing its own legacy, as Phillips has no doubt lived the hell that Salinger spent the last half of his life feverishly working to avoid.

Unfortunately, Phillips has made something of a misguided mess. We enter and exit narrative blind alleys at will. Plot points from singing prison guards to romance to courtroom drama are introduced and abandoned with all the direction of a free-association exercise. It is nearly impossible to follow, which makes it wholly impossible to care about what is happening to the characters on screen, because this time around, Phillip does not care about their journey.

This movie is in every respect a meta-commentary on what Joker was supposed to mean — simultaneously a more direct and more confusing artistic statement from Phillips that is as disjointed as something pulled from the journal of a narcissistic psychopath. It's a correcting of the record that exists more for its creator than its audience, an unnecessary skin-tag hanging off the original. And, most importantly, it's boring.

Oh, and it's a musical.

[Blackhawk]

Sounds like something to watch after Megalopolis.

[Scraper]

Sounds like something to watch after Megalopolis.

Once they said it's a musical I was immediately out. That's a genre that has never interested me.

[Holman]

Big question.

I haven't seen the movie and probably won't, but I read a review that seemed to imply a major (probably THE major) possible spoiler that changes everything about what I thought was what.

Someone who has seen the movie, please just give a Yes or No to my question:

Spoiler:

Is it true that Phoenix's character isn't even the Batman's joker, and that he is simply the inspiration for another character who will become that villain?

Thanks!

[Max Peck]

I dunno, saying that a movie about a narcissistic psychopath is like something pulled from the journal of a narcissistic psychopath doesn't seem like anything is wrong here. And if those flashbacks represent Joker's memories as filtered through his insanity, why not have musical numbers? He is, after all, a showman at heart.

I'm actually eager to see this! ...once it comes to a streaming service for which I already have a subscription.

[LordMortis]

I dunno, saying that a movie about a narcissistic psychopath is like something pulled from the journal of a narcissistic psychopath doesn't seem like anything is wrong here. And if those flashbacks represent Joker's memories as filtered through his insanity, why not have musical numbers? He is, after all, a showman at heart.

I'm actually eager to see this! ...once it comes to a streaming service for which I already have a subscription.

With all the negative attention, if I had watched the first, I'd try to sit through the second just to see what the hubbub was. Alas, no streaming services ATM and I haven't been to the theater since the first Deadpool.

[Max Peck]

Big question.

I haven't seen the movie and probably won't, but I read a review that seemed to imply a major (probably THE major) possible spoiler that changes everything about what I thought was what.

Someone who has seen the movie, please just give a Yes or No to my question:

Spoiler:

Is it true that Phoenix's character isn't even the Batman's joker, and that he is simply the inspiration for another character who will become that villain?

Thanks!

Spoiler:

From what I've read, the ending implies "Yes" but doesn't explicitly confirm it. There seems to be some wiggle room so that they could go either way if a third film was ever made in this continuity.

[Max Peck]

[coopasonic]

Coming to Max, the streaming service not the forum member, Dec 13.