The Joker remake: a hitchhiking sequel to the movie that won the Oscars for Best Actor, Joaquin Phoenix
The original Joker earned 11 Oscar nominations in the last year and generated $1 billion in global box office receipts. So it was inevitable that Warner Bros. would make a sequel, with the same director, Todd Phillips, and star, Joaquin Phoenix.
The reviews weren’t great. The New York Times called it “a dour, unpleasant slog,” and audiences awarded it a D score in exit polls, according to tracker CinemaScore. The musical element — an idea that apparently came to Mr. Phoenix in a dream — offered audiences a fresh idea and, to many critics, it served as the proper way to further explore a deranged main character with a warped imagination. But in this case, it alienated the typical fanboy audience who would be expected to have been frothing for a follow-up to the nihilistic film that won Mr. Phoenix his Best Actor Oscar.
The Joker, Arkham Asylum, and the Judgement of Warner Bros. for Producing a Grand Unified Picture of Batman and Robin: Folie a Deux
The opening draw is much smaller than the first one five years ago, which generated almost a century million dollars. That film cost $55 million to make. This one contains the two locations: Arkham Asylum and Arthur Fleck. The Joker, after his murderous spree killed six people, and the courthouse, where he’s being tried for his crimes. So it shouldn’t have cost as much. But everyone was paid handsomely for their efforts, under the new production heads at Warner Bros., Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. The trade reports state that Mr. Phoenix got a $20 million pay hike to reprise the role of Arthur Fleck/Joker and Lady Gaga got $12 million for return to the bleak world of Mr.Phillips’s creation.
“Joker: Folie a Deux maybe is a folly, but credit the filmmakers with taking a big swing and crossing up genre expectations,” he said on All Things Considered.
The sequel did not deepen our understanding of the characters but it was praised for taking risks, as Bob Mondello stated in his review for NPR’s film critic.
Some film critics and comic book fans thought the sequel strayed too far from the original film, feeling unmoved by the sequel’s musical direction — which came as a surprise to many moviegoers — and unconvinced by its subversive ending. Others simply felt that the love story of Lee and Fleck was not enough to justify the hype. On that note, some also complained that Gaga’s talents were underutilized.
If that wasn’t harsh enough, PostTrak, which also surveys audiences, rated the the Warner Bros. film a half star out of five, according to Deadline. On its tomatometer, it was pegged at just 33%.
CinemaScore gave the sequel a D, considered to be the lowest CinemaScore ever given to a studio comic book movie. Fantastic Four was the last movie that had a C-minus.