Folie à Deux Bombed—What Went Wrong?

By now, you’ve likely heard Joker: Folie à Deux is underperforming at the box office. Though still opening at number one over the weekend, the film has so far garnered only $37.8 million in revenue (even less than the studio’s initial reports of $40 million) against its legitimately absurd budget of $200 million—an integer which, even with its myriad musical numbers, doesn’t often translate to grand spectacle on the screen.

The sequel even received the rare “D” rating from the Las Vegas market research firm CinemaScore—the first movie based on a comic book to do so, oddly—but don’t hold that against it. It’s an honor previously bestowed upon Mary Harron’s American Psycho, Antonia Bird’s Ravenous, Vincenzo Natali’s Splice, Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor—all movies derided in their initial release, but have since either received their own Criterion releases, critical reevaluations or boutique novelizations.

So, what went wrong?  Well, as a jukebox musical/courtroom drama centered on a doomed romance inspired by a character from Batman: The Animated Series, Joker: Folie à Deux is pointedly a movie for no one in particular. However, this is absolutely a creative choice reflecting how its main character isn’t what anyone wants him to be, either. Arthur’s lawyer, Maryanne Stewart, wants him to be dissociative (he’s not), psychologist Dr. Liu wants him judged fully sane (he’s not), TV personality Paddy Meyers wants him to be a cold-blooded killer (he’s not), Lady Gaga’s Lee wants him to be a revolutionary (he’s not), his former coworker Gary Puddles wants him to be the kind man he remembers (he’s not), Harvey Dent wants him to be someone who’s held fully accountable for his crimes (he’s not), his neighbor Sophie Drummond hopes he’s fully delusional (he’s not), and Arthur wants himself to be a romantic leading man (he’s not).

Audiences, seemingly, were also disappointed the mentally ill man they’d been following for two movies did not ascend to the level of folk hero or criminal mastermind they’d been promised. Not only did this “Joker” not become Batman’s archenemy, but was instead revealed to be an inconsequential, sick person failed by his family and community for nearly four hours of screen time. And now he’s singing about his feelings? What’s next, community service at my local hospice?!

Late in the film, when Arthur is running through the streets of Gotham, he passes a movie theater playing Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, a horror-comedy concerning a sculptor so desperate to appeal to his dubious beat poet peers, it leads to art fraud, a string of murders, and eventual suicide. While the Joker duology has been often compared to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, Corman’s film is likely its most accurate touchstone, suggesting there really was a grand design behind this bizarre creative endeavor, after all. Maybe the “Folie à Deux” of its title isn’t the madness shared by the Joker and Harley Quinn, but instead the audience and the cultural circumstances leading to the demand for a sequel to a prestige, Oscar-winning drama based on a children’s comic book character from the 1940s?

No matter what, let’s hope at least one person who went to see the movie walked away believing it’s okay to sing about their feelings. Better to do that than murder six people.

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