Joker: Folie À Deux: A Missed Opportunity in Madness
By Jacob Guynup
Staff Writer
Joker: Folie À Deux is many things. It’s a character study of the Joker that doesn’t explore anything new. It’s a musical with songs that don’t add anything to the plot. It’s a masterful mess. A joke.
The first Joker movie set up an interesting new take on the character, one where we actually know about his life and come to some sort of deeper understanding of why he became a prolific figure of madness. Other depictions of the character make him to be a cunning entity of pure chaos with a grand plan, a method to his madness.
The Joaquin Phoenix version of the character went in the exact opposite direction, with a character that acts solely out of his own violent impulses caused by a lifetime of tragedy. Arthur Fleck has no plan. This fresh take on a classic character is what made the first movie so interesting. The sequel, however, does nothing new, or interesting, or even entertaining with the character.
The idea of a Joker musical is, in my opinion, a great concept. A musical would be a great way of depicting the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn. Overall, I think it would be a fantastic way to see Harley’s perspective on her relationship with the Joker, where the bright and colourful musical numbers contrast the darkness of her relationship with the Joker. It would be an incredible movie that would explore these new versions of the characters in new ways. But no. This great movie was never made, and in its place, we were given a flashback-filled snooze-fest.
To be honest, the most fun I had with this movie wasn’t even related to watching the movie itself, it was with the giant wave of Jonkler memes that followed.
All in all, this movie had so much potential in its concept and its solid cast, but the writers and director chose to throw it all away because they just had to focus more attention on recapping what happened in the first movie than trying something new in the second. And I thought my jokes were bad.