The comic book sequel has been a box office failure, but what makes its result even more catastrophic is its astronomical cost, estimated at more than three times the original film.
Joker 2 is one of those debacles that must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
In 2019, Todd Phillips ‘ Joker rewrote the superhero playbook by placing Batman ‘s arch-nemesis in a grim urban psychodrama.
The film was a critical and commercial success. Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for playing Arthur Fleck , aka Joker, so it made sense for Phillips and Phoenix to reunite for a sequel.
When it was announced that Joker: Folie à Deux would be a musical, co-starring Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn , it didn’t seem like such a bad idea either.
Once again, Phillips was placing DC comics characters into an unexpected genre.
This time, it didn’t pay off: Joker: Folie à Deux grossed $37.8 million in its opening weekend in the United States, less than half of what the first film grossed during the same period on its release.
“It’s one of the lowest-grossing sequels to a major comic book franchise movie on record,” wrote the editorial director of Deadline , a media outlet specializing in Hollywood coverage.
D’Alessandro added that, at this point, Joker 2 has fared even worse than The Marvels , Marvel’s flop from last year.
For those of us who saw Joker: Folie à Deux when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month, this catastrophic result is not a huge surprise.
Phillips and his team seemed determined to disappoint and even mock fans of the original Joker .
Rather than depicting Arthur cutting a bloody swath through Gotham City ‘s plutocrats , the new film portrays the Joker as a pathetic shell of a man whom only the deluded would admire.
What’s more, Phillips presents this in the most self-indulgent, navel-gazing manner.
Most sequels either advance the story told by their predecessor or retell it with some variations, but this one spends over two hours rehashing the original story.
Whether Arthur’s past crimes are being discussed by his therapist and an interviewer at Arkham Asylum, or by lawyers and witnesses in the Gotham City courtroom, every scene is dedicated to people talking about what happened in the movie five years ago .
These debates might have been interesting in a magazine article, a spin-off graphic novel, or a bar chat, but not for a $200 million blockbuster.
Yes, you read that correctly. Various outlets are reporting that Joker: Folie à Deux cost between US$190 and US$200 million to make , an almost unbelievable jump from the US$65 million budget spent on the first film.
That’s the real reason why his first weekend is so calamitous.
If it had cost as much as Joker , or even twice as much, its box office takings might not have seemed so paltry. But around three times as much?
Joker: Folie à Deux is crazy.
Rising costs in Hollywood
Not that this is the most outrageous amount of money spent on a Hollywood movie in recent times.
Last year, a Daily Telegraph article listed some of the astronomically expensive recent blockbusters, including Fast X ($340m), Indiana Jones and the Los Angeles Dodgers ($300m), Mission: Impossible – Sentence Part 1 ($290m) and The Flash ($220m).
Add marketing costs to those numbers, and they all had to do phenomenally well to break even. It is estimated that none of these films turned a significant profit . In fact, Indiana Jones and The Flash both made significant losses.
The article attributed much of the monumental costs of these films to visual effects , especially those that had to be completed at top speed to fit the studio’s release schedule.
But whatever you think of them, each of those films looked like a bona fide blockbuster .
In terms of cast, they are star-studded and filmed in international locations, offering elaborate stunts and visual effects. It’s like we can see the money on the screen.
But that’s not the case with Phillips’s grim, small-scale courtroom drama. In fact, there aren’t many other Hollywood movies in which the money isn’t so shockingly off-screen.
A strange joke
Joker: Folie à Deux doesn’t have any big action scenes or amazing effects.
It’s true that Phoenix and Gaga don’t work for free, but neither of them is a megastar in the film industry.
It’s true that there are some singing and dancing scenes, but they pay homage to old musicals and TV specials, so they’re not particularly lavish.
A detailed breakdown of where all the money went would be much more exciting to read than the movie script.
Eventually, the film begins to feel like a strange postmodern joke at Hollywood’s expense.
In Joker , Arthur attacked Gotham’s richest people and criticized the arrogance of the entertainment industry. But this time, the film’s overspending and underperformance led to the same outcome.
Joker: Folie à Deux burned through a mountain of studio cash in a manner reminiscent of Heath Ledger’s Joker setting fire to a ziggurat of $100 bills in The Dark Knight .
It might have been nobler if Phillips had spent all those millions on something worthwhile.
When Cord Jefferson won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for American Fiction in March, he made a comment in his acceptance speech that now seems like a prophetic critique of the situation with Joker: Folie à Deux : “I understand that this is a risk-averse situation. I understand that, but $200 million movies are also risky .”
“It doesn’t always work, but you take the risk anyway. Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 10 $20 million movies, or 50 $4 million movies,” he said.
If studio executives didn’t listen to Jefferson then, maybe they will now.
Read more: Tuning! Lady Gaga Explains How She Changed Her Singing Style For ‘joker 2: Folie À Deux’
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