Joker 2 is exactly what comic book nerds have clamoured for – now they’ll regret it

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Tlisted here are, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped, two nice tragedies in life: one, not getting what you need – and the opposite, getting it. It’s an aphorism that shall be keenly felt by comedian ebook followers this weekend, as Joker: Folie à Deux arrives in cinemas. The movie – a sequel to 2019’s Joker, the dour DC Comics adaptation that reimagined Batman’s clown nemesis as a violent, annoyed incel within the Travis Bickle mould – appears like a pointed try to adult-ise the superhero style. Loads of comedian ebook followers have been clamouring for precisely this: a superhero movie that calls for to be taken significantly, a gritty, grounded story that simply so occurs to happen in a world of caped vigilantes. Effectively, now they’ve bought it.

Over the previous decade and a half, superhero variations have been the dominant pressure in well-liked cinema. However for all the cash they make, for all of the cultural oxygen they inhale, there’s all the time a caveat: the refusal, in some essential circles, to treat them as substantial artworks. Martin Scorsese’s likening of Marvel movies to “theme parks” is a comparability that has caught like tar. Likewise the ever present “quick meals of cinema” analogy. Nevertheless it’s an inferiority advanced that’s solely midway justified. Sure, the style nonetheless has its naysayers. However even earlier than Joaquin Phoenix’s efficiency in Joker received him Greatest Actor on the Academy Awards, superhero movies had hardly been shut out of the corridors of status: as early as 1979, Superman received an Oscar (for visible results), whereas The Darkish Knight, with Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning villain flip, confirmed that critics have been completely keen to recognise the creative deserves of an amazing comedian ebook blockbuster. However nonetheless, followers known as to push the boat additional out, to make ever extra self-serious movies, an object completely impervious to accusations of frivolity. Folie à Deux is that this object. It’s credible, restrained… and utterly, completely uninteresting.

In gentle of the brand new movie, the unique Joker now looks as if a dry run – a comic book ebook film that was aesthetically sober and grownup however finally capitulated to the form of showy, facile bombast that followers may anticipate. In its third act, Joker noticed its protagonist, mentally ailing get together clown Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) shoot and kill a chat present host on dwell TV, homicide a number of different folks, and incite a riot. The sequel walks again this bombast, unspools it, condemns it. It’s a movie that abjectly resists its personal premise, a movie a couple of supervillain who refuses the decision to supervillainy.

Nearly all of Folie à Deux considerations Joker’s imprisonment and homicide trial. We get scenes within the jail yard. Scenes of discussions together with his lawyer. Countless micro-insights into Fleck’s psyche. The movie is, incongruously, a jukebox musical, however the songs, previous present tunes, provide little in the way in which of escape. Apart from a quick (and surprisingly humorous) sequence of courtroom showmanship, Folie à Deux is punishingly subdued, an train in deliberate denial. Pop celebrity Woman Gaga is introduced in because the massively well-liked character Harley Quinn, Joker’s chaotic paramour (given, on this movie, the fractionally much less fanciful identify of Lee Quinzel) – however even she is finally unable to coax a supervillainous end up of Fleck. In the direction of the tip of the film, Fleck is sprung from the courtroom, and Folie à Deux for a second appears to capitulate to its style, inching in direction of a spectacular motion sequence – however no. None arrives. This, director Todd Phillips appears to be saying, is what practical superhero fiction actually is.

Folie à Deux is Michael Corleone in Godfather Half III, Stringer Bell in season three of The Wire – an inveterate legal in search of the approval of straight society. However, like these males, it’s discovering that approval is difficult to return by. By most typical metrics, the unique Joker was an unequivocal success, breaking the document on the time for the highest-grossing R-rated film (making over $1bn), on high of the Oscar win. Folie à Deux, with much more inventive freedom and a much bigger price range (near $200m, supposedly – in the identical ballpark as large effects-driven blockbusters comparable to Avengers Assemble) was poised to be a triumphant encore. But when predictions and early reactions are something to go by, most of the people received’t be having it. A glut of damaging evaluations hasn’t helped, in fact (although The Impartial branded it “formally daring”). However it is a movie that appears designed to displease, and its viewers can scent it within the air, like a fuel leak.

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The irony is, in actually committing to the experiment of a severe Joker movie, Phillips has confirmed exactly why there’s no want for one. Arthur Fleck could also be extra psychologically practical than Ledger’s electrical interpretation of the character in The Darkish Knight, however he’s nowhere close to as entertaining to observe – or as suave. Perversely, Folie à Deux succumbs to the identical prejudices that comedian followers so despise – the concept that a movie must be “arty” and “grownup” to be taken significantly. In disfiguring the style into the form of one thing resembling “correct artwork”, Folie à Deux has sacrificed the very issues that made superhero movies worthwhile within the first place. Who’s laughing now? Completely nobody.