I’ve found myself doing this thing lately whenever I watch a bad movie. Instead of shutting it off like a sane person would, I instead try to visualize a way to make it good. Sometimes it isn’t so obvious with how to do that, some movies are just not salvageable. Other times, it’s just so obvious, I don’t know why the filmmakers didn’t do it themselves.
Joker 2 is just that. A terrible movie with a very obvious way to fix it. But to do that, you first have to cut away the useless stuff packed into this 2 hour bore fest.
If you remove the pointless musical numbers, literally nothing happens in this movie. It is pointless, boring, repetitive and half-baked and ultimately it has no reason to exist other than the filmmakers hating its own fan base and wanting to give them a giant middle finger while taking their money.
The first movie was essentially Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, so what movie is Todd Phillips ripping off this time?
Just from the plot summery, my first thought went to Chicago. However, after watching Joker 2, another movie comes to mind. Fight Club. But if Fight Club was really really done poorly.
Or I should say, if done right, this movie should have been Fight Club, all the elements are set up, but like everything this film attempts, they fumbled it.
Joker 2 kind of breaks down into three things that you’ll see. Arthur smoking. Arthur standing around while smoking. Arthur going to court so they can recap everything that happened in the first film to us like we’re watching Silent Night, Deadly Night 2.
But at least in Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 eventually it stopped being a recap show and started doing its own thing. Joker 2 never does anything like that.
They set things up briefly but do nothing with it. A group of violent guards that torture not only Arthur but every other inmate. Anything happen to them? Nope. Does Arthur stand up for his one friend in prison as the guards kill, maybe try to save him or get revenge? Nope and nope.
What about the whole Harley Quinn aspect of the film, does that go anywhere or pay off in anyway? Nope. She’s so inconsequential to the plot, just like the musical numbers, she could have been cut out and you lose nothing.
Even the little cartoon at the beginning of the film was pointless and could be cut with nothing lost.
This sequel had twice the budget the first had and yet it gives you absolutely nothing to justify it.
The first film did a great job of setting things up, building tension, there is none of that here. You’re just going to be bored out of your mind, waiting for something to happen. You saw that great trailer, it put butts in seats, so you expect something to eventually happen. Again, another giant nope.
The same things keep happening too, with the exact same payoff. Earlier in the film Harley or Lee as they call her, sets a fire and tries to escape with Arthur, a very half-hearted attempt, with them quickly getting caught.
Then later the exact same thing happens when a car bomb goes off, punching a hole in the courtroom wall, letting Arthur escape, which he is then immediately caught.
Half-hearted is really the best way to describe this movie. It seems to attempt to toss a few things at the wall to see what sticks, but it all just falls off, with nothing sticking and all you have is a wet stain.
The plot is so paper thin, it really wouldn’t take too long to break it all down, so what I’m going to do instead is interject my ideas I had while watching this to possibly make it better. I believe what started this little thought experiment was when I watched the director’s cut of Rebel Moon. The question kept nagging at me, how does one make these movies good? I think I came up with a pretty good solution.
I’m not so sure my solution here will be as successful, but let’s find out!
It has been two years since the events of the first film, Arthur no longer seems to be in a psychiatric hospital but a prison for the criminally insane. That ending in the first film where it seems he murdered the person interviewing him, might as well of never happened. It’s never brought up.
But for some reason two years later Arthur is going to trial. I thought it was to reevaluate his case to have him either released or moved to the psych ward. But it then I guess turns into a trial to see if he is competent enough to be executed.
The two years thing is too long of a gap for this to be happening. This either should have taken place right after the events of the first film or this is now a new trial dealing with the murder he committed at the very end of the first movie, which this movie forgot about.
Secondly, making Harley Quinn a patient at the psych ward is also not how these two should have met. They already set up that Arthur is seeing a psychoanalyst to determine if Arthur is crazy or not. Why not make the “Lee” character the analyst?
As it is in the film, these two barely share scenes together in the real world. They talk maybe twice, while everything else is just a fantasy in his head.
Make Harley his shrink, like she is in every other form of media this character shows up in. It would have given the two more time to interact, to connect, to actually talk. It would have better built their relationship so you at least buy into it that these two could fall in love.
It also would have set something up later in the film, there are no twists in this, only disappointment.
Unfortunately, this character is about as much as Harley Quinn as Arthur is the Joker, meaning they aren’t at all. This isn’t The Joker the same way this isn’t Harley Quinn.
What they do with the Lee character is also just terrible. They made her a groupie, looking to ride off his fame. That isn’t what the character is even slightly about.
This movie is more concerned about scolding its fans for liking this Joker character.
Fight Club is about a man using an alternate personality to grow a fan base that grows so large they make him the head of a criminal empire without him doing anything. They elevate him to a level he can’t possibly live up to, so he has to fake it, playing the role.
That I think is perfect for what they set up for this Joker, Arthur isn’t the prince of crime, he’s a sick dude who suffered a lot of abuse as a child.
They constantly hammer home how low IQ Arthur is, just to make sure you understand he’s an idiot. But not only that, this film does something else which kind of pissed me off.
During trial, Arthur’s fantasy girlfriend next door neighbor shows up on the stand to be cross examined. During this examination, she reveals that Arthur’s mom hated him and was making fun of him when she called him Happy, poking fun at his laugh.
I see why he killed her. Which is kind of funny when they bring it up in the film, because he has only been charged with 5 murders, not smothering his mother to death. The first thing he says to Lee is how it was actually 6, freely giving out this information.
The guard who seems to either like Arthur or hate his guts, gets him into the psych ward music program. I thought it was because he wanted to do something nice for him, as he saw Arthur crushing on Lee. But now that I think back on it, I’m pretty sure the guard only did it so he could take a break and sing.
In my version, the music stuff is gone and this trip outside his prison is to see Lee, his shrink, determining if he has a split personality or not.
Actually, you know what, keep the stupid music numbers, have him fantasize about them being together after each meeting. The twist would be, she’s actually doing the same thing and this time it isn’t all in his head.
And that would kick off a scheme to get him out of prison.
Because he has to travel such a long way to the courthouse, an ambush easily could have been set by her and his adoring fans. Have them attack the transport instead of the courtroom. That way you get this more tension filled sequence, much like what you got in The Dark Knight.
Or if you wanted to keep the bomb, just have Harley be the one who sets it up, again with the help of his groupies.
And all of this should have been the first hour of the film. The other hour should have been basically Arthur realizing he isn’t this Joker persona, much like how this happens in the closing arguments in the movie.
He reveals he is kind of a phony, he just wanted to be liked, and folks seemed to connect with this “Joker”. But revealing how fake he is, loses his fan base, much like how this movie killed off its fan base.
I like the idea of him stuck putting on this performance so people will like him, his gang does things they think he’d want them to do, when in reality he has no idea what he wants to do and never tells them to do anything.
Harley falls head over heels for Joker but doesn’t care at all about the real him, only the Joker persona. Keep that the same but having him trapped like this is a great way to end the film.
Now for what really happens.
It’s very clear from the start that Harley is just using him. After their failed escape attempt, she checks herself out of the psych ward as she was there voluntarily, hoping she could somehow cross paths with him.
Afterwards she uses her relationship with him, the whole five minutes they spent together, to get attention with the media.
Meanwhile, Harvey Dent, yes Two-Face is the one prosecuting Arthur, seeking the death penalty. His job is to show the jury Arthur doesn’t have a split personality, that what he did was all him and he knew very well what it was he was doing when he did it.
To prove that they introduce a few witnesses. Arthur’s neighbor like I mentioned but also his very tiny coworker who he let live.
During the cross examination with his therapist, she brings up his past trauma, which Arthur tries to block from his mind, donning the Joker persona again, playing things up for his fans and the cameras broadcasting the trial.
But after the countless beatings from the guards, resulting in the death of his only friend in prison, he kind of just gives up.
It was essentially that I Think You Should Leave skit.
His fans leave, Lee leaves, but at the end of his speech he mentions wanting to blow it all up. He still has a few faithful who take orders, so they plant a car bomb, blowing up the site of the courtroom as his guilty verdict is read out.
His fans find him and try to sneak him out of Gotham, but he freaks out and tries to find Harley, who just happens to be waiting for him on the steps we saw him dancing down in the first film.
She rejects him and once again he is caught by the police.
Ending time!
This has a terrible ending. Before the movie was released, I saw something about Joker trending on twitter. A “real” ending was leaked, claiming Jared Leto’s Joker shows up, kills him and tattoos DEAD on his forehead.
Ridiculous, right? Well, what if I told you half of that was true?
What happens is, Arthur gets called away by the guards, claiming he has a visitor. If he really had someone waiting for him, who knows. Most likely it was a ploy to get him alone.
During the movie, there was this inmate the movie made sure to constantly cut to, for no real reason other than to suggest something was going to be happening with this person eventually.
As Arthur goes to see who wants to see him, that inmate stabs him to death. And as Arthur lies there bleeding to death, it is highly suggested the one who stabbed him was actually Heath Ledger’s Joker, as he does his Joker laugh while giving himself those scars, finally answering how he got them.
What a terrible ending. The only positive note I can give it, at least it didn’t end with another pointless musical number.
Joker: Folie à Deux might be the worst sequel ever made. Okay, what are some of the worst sequels ever made? The Mask 2 Son of the Mask, that one is pretty unwatchable. But that was a comedy, comedy doesn’t count. Blair Witch 2? Is Joker 2 worse than that? Oh yeah, Speed 2, I forgot about that stinker.
So there’s a long history of movie sequels being dogshit. The idea of making the sequel to Joker a musical could have worked. Instead of a jukebox musical, make original songs. There are more people than Lin-Manuel Miranda who make music for musicals. Having Joker and Harley sing these 60-year-old songs no one cares about is not the way to go.
Cutting away to a fantasy is also not how this should have gone either. Stay in your world, maybe let the fantasy sneak in gradually. Includes others into the musical, not just Harley and Joker. You have no idea how old this gets after a while.
You’re done after the second or third time they switch over. If people watch the digital versions, they will skip this shit. Sure, they might give it a go the first time, but if they ever rewatch this, no one is sitting through these musical numbers again. I don’t care how diehard of a Lady Gaga fan you are, you aren’t watching those scenes over again.
They made Arthur so passive, so pathetic, you just don’t care about his character anymore. You don’t care if he succeeds, because he doesn’t really have anything he’s fighting for anymore. He doesn’t make a stand or a statement, he does and is nothing throughout this whole film and gets stabbed to death by the end of it.
I hated this movie; it gets a big and I mean BIG SKIP! This movie is so bad, it retroactively makes the first film worse. Do not see this, you will get no enjoyment out of it.
Starting Horror Month off with a fart.
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