Film Name: 小丑2：双重妄想 / Joker: Folie à Deux / Joker 2
“Joker: Folie à Deux” (hereinafter referred to as ‘Joker 2’) is probably one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, which has been met with a huge amount of bad reviews since its release, and even more so when it was released on a large scale, it suffered a double loss at the box office and in the word-of-mouth.
As a proper sequel to the 2019 phenomenon “Joker”, I will watch it regardless of its quality, especially if I have the chance to see it on the big screen, which is even more important to miss – after watching it, I can finally see why the movie died a violent death: it did “make it difficult for any mainstream audience to like”. It has achieved the feat of being “unlikeable for any mainstream audience”.
People who appreciated Joker felt cheated and betrayed;
Those who originally hated “Joker” will feel that their dislike has finally been confirmed;
Those who didn’t understand “Joker” will now become even more incomprehensible.
To be fair, “Joker 2” is not a bad movie, there is a framework, there are ideas, restore the characters themselves, Joaquin’s acting is still on the line, deconstructed again at the same time in the form of bold innovation …… But ah, it is in the repetitive, ineffective place to waste too much time, so that the entire film and the project, as well as the same, seems a bit unnecessary. It seems a bit unnecessary.
Yes, the story of Arthur “The Joker” would have been best served by ending abruptly after the first movie, and the second movie, while not exactly a doozy, would have been redundant.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below].
Let’s talk briefly about one of the obvious points of contention in Joker 2, the song and dance element.
Personally, I like to watch song-and-dance movies, and I’m usually impressed when I see one.
Because this type of movie is often full of passion and desire to express, have something to say, will not hide, a word to the audience to sing and dance a section, and most of the songs inside the good, well-decorated environment and choreographed dance is also enough eye-catching, it is easy to get on the head.
However, I can’t say I like the song and dance sequences in “Joker 2” much. There are two main problems with the movie, one is that there are a lot of similar sequences, and the other is that it doesn’t fit the subject matter well enough.
The song-and-dance sequences in the movie can be roughly categorized as “Arthur’s inner monologue” and “Leigh and Arthur’s fantasies of madness,” and the scenes are both locally sourced and alternatively constructed, and both narrative and purely lyrical. –But they are too monotonous, the dance scenes are a bit better, the song types are really lackluster, and after watching it, it feels like it’s all in the same key, and it’s quite homogenized.
PS: I can’t say Joaquin’s singing is bad, but it’s a bit of a shock to hear him yelling at the top of his lungs on a couple of the key numbers ……
To put it bluntly, the only stages Arthur can perform on are the Arkham Talent Center, the bar theatre, the courtroom, etc., and even fewer emotions are left for him, but only gloom, doubt, uncertainty and a little bit of hope.
This is a crime drama that doesn’t really lend itself to the song-and-dance format, and since the genre’s audience is already small, the actual performance of the song-and-dance portion of the movie is a minus and a negative asset.
This shortcoming points to the biggest and most central problem of “Joker 2”: most of the time, it keeps spinning around in the same place without knowing what’s going on.
The first “Joker”, no matter whether it is overrated or not, no matter whether it is over-interpreted, at least the character line is clear and complete, we can see the humble Arthur Fleck under the double torture of internal illness and external environment, one after another do something out of the ordinary, and by mistake and rightfully become “Joker”, a symbol of Gotham’s chaotic spiritual totem. The Joker, a spiritual totem that symbolizes the chaos of Gotham.
It’s easy to go up, but it’s hard to go down. The problem with Joker 2 is that after the characters and the story have reached the top, it’s left in a state of limbo.
The movie follows Arthur as he is arrested and awaits his judgment day, during which time he meets Leigh, who is obsessed with him, and the two quickly fall in love, while Arthur must make a decision about his identity.
In my opinion, nearly half of “Joker 2” is just the same old wasted drama that rehashes the same old question: does Arthur have a dual personality?
It’s a big question, but it’s not that complicated, and the audience knows the answer – there’s no such thing as Arthur’s dual personality (I love the opening Warner title animation, it’s a throwback to childhood Bugs Bunny days), and the so-called “Joker protecting Arthur” is just a way for Mariana, the lawyer, to get out of trouble. The so-called “Joker protects Arthur” is nothing more than a sophomoric ploy used by the lawyer Mariana to get out of the case.
So the real question at the heart of the movie is “Who is Arthur?”
For countless believers and followers of the Joker, Arthur can only be the Joker himself, especially Leigh, who is a successful up-close-and-personal chaser, who has been trying to evoke Arthur’s Joker side since they met, and in order to do so, she has been willing to lie, dedicate herself to the Joker, show up in public, and engage in a war of words.
Arthur, who has already calmed down, begins to suffer again under Leigh’s influence, and is willing to become a highly symbolic clown for the sake of his rare “soul” lover.
But in reality, the image of the Joker only appeared to Arthur through a series of coincidences, and when he really tried to become the Joker, it didn’t work out so well.
The essence of “Joker 2” is to deconstruct the Joker of the first film, to knock him back into Arthur’s archetype, to reassemble, to recreate, to create a fragile, lonely, helpless, living human being – but, unfortunately, this deconstruction and reorganization comes too late.
The pacing in the early and middle parts of the movie is very dissuasive to the viewer (someone left in the middle of my show last night), and the song-and-dance sequences exacerbate this problem, and even when the narrative becomes normalized in the later stages, it’s still all over the place.
As I said earlier, “Joker 2” has too much repetitive narration, watering down to over an hour what could be explained in a couple of minutes, especially when most of that stuff was clear from the first movie, which makes it seem like an ineffective dry run.
Even after overcoming the repetitive and jarring narrative and focusing on the characters themselves, “Joker 2” is not as pleasing to the eye as it is to the eye because it offends so much.
Most of the audience who like “Joker” have their own spokesperson in the movie, that is, Leigh in the guise of the Joker Girl – in their eyes, the Joker is synonymous with the rebellion against order, the return to the chaos, with a crazy and arrogant charm in words and deeds, they aspire to the Joker, they need the Joker.
However, very few of them (except for the talent that blew up the courtroom) can actually make it to the Joker’s point, and they are still essentially ordinary people who retain their sanity and bottom line.
When order is completely lost, chaos is meaningless, so “resisting without overthrowing” is the best state of affairs, and it is enough to promote the Joker as an idol and totem.
When Arthur bared his soul in court and admitted that he wasn’t the Joker, the fanatics left in droves, including the biggest fan, Leigh – what value could the real Arthur have when all she (they) wanted was a madman on the surface, a joker who could serve as her mental opiate forever?
One of the scenes that hit me the hardest in “Joker 2” was the crying of midget Gary as he testified in court.
From the moment Gary enters the courtroom, there is sporadic laughter, as if it’s only right to laugh at a midget, and even Arthur, who is wearing clown makeup in his defense, tries to make fun of his last name, Puddles, when he opens his mouth……. But in the end Gary cries and tells Arthur, “You were the only one who didn’t laugh at me, and you were the only one who didn’t laugh at me,” and the real Arthur is the only one who ever did. You were the only one who didn’t make fun of me”, and that person is now a nightmare that keeps him up at night, and the posturing Arthur is instantly disoriented.
Yeah, of course there’s something wrong with the circumstances that drove an empathetic person to become a murderer, but is it any good to idolize a murderer that even the person himself is proud of and believes in?
No, the truth isn’t cool at all, it’s not funny.
“What’s wrong with “Joker 2” is that it tells the hard truth: that there is no “Joker” and that Arthur is just a poor man.
It’s clear that the creators of “Joker 2” are trying to right the wrongs of “Joker,” but it’s too risky to take such a radical and crushing reimagining, and the truth is that most people don’t buy it – after all, people come to see the Joker, and how many of them like to see a mentally disturbed wretch having a seizure over and over again?
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