JOKER 2 Costs $200 Million!

[TaranofPrydain]

I saw the clip. It fails on two fronts. First, because fans of DC comics don't want to see one of the best known villains dancing in accompaniment to Lady Gaga's singing. Second, because it is very poorly staged cinematically. The genuine look is quite horrible looking, almost like a fly by night production, and musical numbers are not meant to be so claustrophobic.

[AndyDursin]

This is a sign of the times, but since when did Todd Phillips -- who directed THE HANGOVER and ROAD TRIP -- turn into the new Scorsese? Phoenix and Lady Gaga committed to working with him based on...the first movie? He's not exactly a visionary filmmaker -- his whole rep is based on a bunch of frat comedies basically -- and this movie's disaster is proof positive he got lucky the first time around (as much as I disliked it).

[TaranofPrydain]

This is a sign of the times, but since when did Todd Phillips -- who directed THE HANGOVER and ROAD TRIP -- turn into the new Scorsese? Phoenix and Lady Gaga committed to working with him based on...the first movie? He's not exactly a visionary filmmaker and this movie's disaster is proof positive he got lucky the first time around (as much as I disliked it).

If anything, modern Hollywood, at least in the last 15 years, maybe longer, who knows, has become a place where an actor or director will get lavish praise thrown on them for just doing one film that either gets a big box office response or win over the critics, or sometimes both. It no longer rests on actual track records, just the emotion of a given moment. And it has proven to be disastrous in most circumstances. They are just so desperate to claim that there is new talent that they are willing to give it to people who don't deserve it.


Joker though, in 2019, didn't just have the box office. It very controversially won the grand prize at the Venice film festival (more than likely helped by the fact that it would be right up the alley of one of the jury members: Mary Herron, director of I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho). That was enough to get Phillips all of the absurdly overbuilt attention.

[AndyDursin]

The sequel nobody wanted apparently -- looks like a 50% drop right off the top from the original's first weekend, and that's BEFORE word of mouth will kick in for how bad it truly is.

Warner surely regretting already what they forked over for this movie's budget.

[TaranofPrydain]

The sequel nobody wanted apparently -- looks like a 50% drop right off the top from the original's first weekend, and that's BEFORE word of mouth will kick in for how bad it truly is.

Warner surely regretting already what they forked over for this movie's budget.

38% Rotten Tomatoes Critical Score
36% Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score
46 Metacritic Score
5.4 IMDb
2.6 Letterboxd

A bomb by all measures. It won't even gross $100 million in the US.

[AndyDursin]

WB has had some hits but this and FURIOSA may end up competing against one another for bigger sequel wipeout given the budgets and promotion.

[TaranofPrydain]

WB has had some hits but this and FURIOSA may end up competing against one another for bigger sequel wipeout given the budgets and promotion.

Yes, it will be a surprise if they don't end up in the red for the year in their theatrical department. Furiosa bombed too, but its,audiences, minimal that they were, did at least respond to it better than this.

[Monterey Jack]

More like Folly A Dull. What a humongous, baffling letdown from the original.

[Monterey Jack]

I'm astounded that WB didn't pull the plug on this just reading the screenplay, let alone spending over three time what the original cost just for a logy courtroom drama interspersed with listless musical numbers that have no visual snap whatsoever. The fact that the characters sang didn't throw me so much (I've been acclimating myself to musicals over the last several years, and can enjoy a good song & dance number), but what did throw me was the feeling that I was watching what should have been the prologue to a proper Joker sequel padded out to 138 interminable minutes. Where the movie ends is realistically where it should have begun, allowing the film to build upon the ending of the first, turning Arthur Fleck into a clown-painted Spartacus of civil unrest. We barely get ANY sense of the societal rot that coursed through the original movie and which led to his horrific crimes in the first place, because we see almost none of Gotham City (aka early-1980s New York), the movie either stuck inside a dankly-lit prison set or a dimly-lit courtroom. And the court stuff is boring as sin, because it consists only of actors from the first movie recapping events we've already seen, thus there's none of the suspenseful pleasures of a good courtroom drama of putting the pieces of the crime together in your head. The big moral dilemma here is whether or not Arthur Fleck's Joker persona reflects an entirely different personality, and whether or not that qualifies him for a trip to the gas chamber. That's it! And the movie spends almost half its running time on it!

[TaranofPrydain]

And it just received the lowest opening night CinemaScore since February 2020. It's toast.

[Eric W.]

Good riddance.

[Monterey Jack]

This would have been more fun to sit through for 138 minutes...

[AndyDursin]

[Monterey Jack]

This is projected to make less this weekend than Terrifier 3.

[Monterey Jack]

Beaten out by a movie where a killer clown gives a dude a chainsaw enema.