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Notes -
Spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) ahead
Time for some low-stakes culture war. The sequel to Joaquin Phoenix's Joker movie is out. The first movie was essentially a remake of Scorsese's Taxi Driver with a little bit of supervillain flavour that resulted in a moral panic about how its empathetic portrayal of a mentally ill loner might spark an incel shooting. In the end, no shooting happened and the movie made bank.
The sequel now takes a different approach and turned out to be a musical featuring gay icon Lady Gaga. A bold choice that critics describe as
The Critical Drinker, a, uh, heterodox critic went a step further and had the following to say
Internet randos floated memes to the same effect. First, a plot summary:
And now for some red hot culture war schizophrenia:
And while I think the above conspiracy theory gets the motivations and machinations of the ominous they hilariously wrong, there is something to be said about a Zeitgeist that sees anything enjoyed by (white) men as something in dire need of female supervision.
A small kink in that explanation: The second movie was written and directed by the same people. So, what happened?
I just want to defend the Lady Gaga musical thing.
I think that would fit the sort of nihilistic “clown world” perspective the first movie was dipping into. Basically the world has gone crazy, and a movie where a psychopathic Joker character is maybe but maybe not signing absolutely over the top showtimes with Lady Gaga while enacting some ultra violence would have been perfect. That, to me, captures the spirit of Joker as a supervillain. He’s the answer to the question of what would happen if the crazy schitzophrenic homeless man you see on the street screaming got pushed just a little bit further.
That’s a terrifying villain. I was actually really looking forward to this movie and was totally bought into the musical/gaga thing. From what I’ve read they just didn’t commit to it hard enough.
Yeah, Sweeny Todding it up would have had a lot of potential.
It's kinda been an undertone for the Harley Quinn stuff, most overly by way of Marilyn Monroe with the Diamonds are A Girl's Best Friend scene in Birds of Prey. And while that series has its ups and downs -- most overtly, the writers keep writing checks for melee combat that the fight choreographers can't cash; more subtly, Quinn herself often dives from 'funny' to 'obnoxious' by an hour in -- the dichotomy between someone who treating life like a video game and the actually-gorey violence in something like Suicide Squad does work and make her disquieting even when on the side of the 'heroes'.
But apparently not what they were aiming for here.
Agreed, an updated Sweeny Todd set in a Taxi-Driver-esque, legally distinct New York, starring Joaquin Pheonix and Lady Gaga actually sounds like a lot of fun. Somone should totally make that movie.
Unfortunately that's not the movie that got made.
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