Joker (2019):
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024):
Joker (2019)
Todd Phillips makes one of the most political, mainstream movies ever, and when people agree with the political message, he then says that he didn’t make a political movie.
It’s either cowardice or plain stupidity.
It was also beautiful to see all the rich and pro-status quo idiots disagree and/or not get the political message of this.
In the end, this movie is basically showing how to kickstart a revolution against the rich. Not even in a really clever way. Let’s hope it happens for real now.
Post-Scriptum: This isn’t a comic book movie. The Joker part is purely here for marketing reason.
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) (spoiler ahead)
A nearly direct follow-up to the previous film. The story is basically the trial of the Arthur Fleck / Joker for the crimes he did in the previous movie.
The movie tries to deconstruct the previous film’s “message” (because the director is a coward)… and even that, it does it in a piss-poor way.
The movie adds Harley Quinn (played by Lady Gaga, who is doing a fantastic job with the sloppy writing given) in the worst way possible. In this she’s “normal”, she’s just a rich bourgeois girl playing pretend-poor by lying to the Arthur Fleck / Joker about being a poor girl from his neighborhood. Her whole personality is that: she’s a love interest who does nothing but lie to the Arthur Fleck / Joker (because… reasons? I think she says it’s because he might like her more this way, because for some reason she thinks he prefers trashy girls)… also she sings.
So yes, the movie introduces musical parts… which are absolutely pointless, most of them are either off-topic or are literally “repeating” the message that the scene we saw before said. A lot of them literally start with a cut to black from the previous scene, as if they were forced into the movie (because they got a professional singer as one of the main characters, so they have to make her sing).
The movie takes place mostly in 2 locations: the asylum and the courtroom. One good thing is that the asylum is surprisingly well developed… even if they basically treat it like a “normal” prison.
During the trial Arthur Fleck / Joker says that “Joker was just him pretending” (for reason, even though the previous movie and that one kinda demonstrated that it’s actually split personality/bipolar disorder). Harley Quinn leaves after that.
The trial completes, and someone decides to bomb the courthouse exactly at this moment (it’s shown on TV so at least it’s not magic timing).
Arthur Fleck leaves by the opened hole, enters a car. When he sees that the people in it agree with Joker too much, he decides to leave and runs until he gets to the “meme stair” of the first movie. Harley Quinn is magically there, she tells him she loves Joker, not Arthur Fleck, tells him she’s pregnant (could be a lie or not, she says that for seemingly no reason/point), and then leaves. It doesn’t make any sense why she was there, on those stairs, that were super minor and only used for one scene in the first movie, and I’m not sure why Arthur Fleck decided that he could find her here, but he did.
The police come to those stairs, arrest him, put him back in the asylum waiting for his execution… and then he gets stabbed (by a guy that was in the background for the whole movie throwing scary looks). The guy that stabbed him then cut his own throat for reasons (Todd Phillips not wanting to leave him “available as a bad guy” for a sequel with Harley Quinn, I assume).
Post-Scriptum: This is far more of a comic book movie. Which is partially why it’s so much worse than it could have been, since it’s effectively coming after a political drama.
Rating and Recommendation
Joker (2019): 8/10 - Recommended
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024): 5/10 - Not Recommended
Todd Phillips reaction (2019): Coward/10 - Not Recommended