The other clown shoe finally drops.
The sequel to Todd Phillips’ ersatz controversial Joker doesn’t just pick up where the original left off—it picks at the very fabric of what made the first film resonate with its most ardent devotees. Joker: Folie à Deux is a brazen, almost spiteful dismantling of the cult that sprang up around Arthur Fleck, both in the movie and beyond the fourth wall. Where the original basked in its aura of cynical nihilism, the sequel sets that same bleakness in its crosshairs, delivering a ruthless deconstruction that leaves the once-celebrated mythos exposed and hollow.
The character of Lee (an underutilised Lady Gaga) serves as something of an audience surrogate for those hardcore fans who latched onto the Joker’s anarchic ethos. Unlike Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who is a damaged, vulnerable soul, Lee is fixated on the Joker persona itself. She’s disinterested in Arthur as a person—her obsession lies solely with the chaos-bringer, the myth of the Joker. Arthur is a means to that end and this destructive dynamic becomes the linchpin of the film’s narrative. Arthur, in turn, flirts with embracing the Joker mantle once more but ultimately rejects it, recognising it for the delusion that it is. This public disavowal of the Joker persona earns Lee’s fury, mirroring the anticipated response of those fans who glorified Arthur’s descent into nihilism in the first film.
The film is littered with moments clearly designed to alienate and provoke those who turned Joker into a cultural touchstone for rebellion. The die-hard cult of Joker followers is referenced, but they are rarely glimpsed and never glorified. Instead, they are portrayed as an abstract, faceless movement, desperately clinging to the figure Arthur no longer wishes to be. Chief among the metatextual provocations is how easily Lee, a woman, manipulates Arthur—something that will no doubt rankle those whose toxic concept of their own masculinity won’t tolerate such a reversal of power dynamics. Arthur’s rejection of the Joker identity, prompted by Lee’s relentless manipulations and the trial delivering a moment of clarity for him, feels like a deliberate affront to the cult-like following, a challenge to their simplistic and solipsistic interpretation of what Joker represents.
Joaquin Phoenix once again anchors Joker: Folie à Deux with a performance that is as captivating as it is exhausting and despite the variable nature of the film surrounding him remains magnetically watchable. Phoenix seems to be gleefully aware of the absurdity of the narrative, leaning into the chaotic absurdism of Arthur’s spiraling world. There’s a sense that Phoenix is complicit in the film’s attempt to troll its own audience, delivering a portrayal that is both raw and deliberately unglamorous. As Arthur becomes increasingly disillusioned with his own mythology, Phoenix conveys a palpable weariness, as though Arthur—and perhaps Phoenix himself—is tired of playing the role everyone demands him to.
Todd Phillips, on the other hand, seems oblivious to the irony at the heart of his own film. While Phoenix appears to be in on the joke, Phillips is still trying to frame Folie à Deux as a weighty social commentary. The film splits its time between prison and courtroom settings, yet somehow manages to extract almost no dramatic tension from either. It’s an impressive failure of direction that highlights Phillips’ limitations as an auteur—he’s a director still desperate to be taken seriously, yet incapable of grasping the nuances required to truly elevate his material.
The much-discussed musical elements, rather than adding depth or whimsy, come across more contrived than complimentary. These musical sequences feel like yet another jab at the fans who misinterpreted the first film’s intentions, a surreal rebuke to their taking themselves and the pretensions of a comic book movie character far too seriously, although there is a glimpse – during Fleck’s fantasy rendition of “The Joker” (from The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd) – of what a truly glorious Batman adversary Phoenix could have brought us had the tale taken the more orthodox route.
Ultimately, Joker: Folie à Deux is a curious exercise in self-destruction. It deconstructs the very foundation on which its predecessor stood, exposing the vacuity at its core. It’s an almost admirable act of sabotage, driven by Phoenix’s fascinating performance, made funnier still by Phillips’ lack of self-awareness. Where the first film cynically courted controversy with a superficial veneer of profundity, the sequel strips away any illusion of depth, leaving behind a dreary, near-plotless experience that feels less like a continuation and more like an elaborate prank at the expense of its own fanbase. This is what “burning it all down” actually looks like, and while Phoenix will rise from these ashes, I doubt Todd Phillips’ career will ever fully recover. What a punchline.
