Okay so don't hate me, but I never saw the first JOKER movie.
So many people told me I would love it, but because of its reputation for being an "incel" movie, I avoided it.
And now I'll give you even more reason to hate me: I don't enjoy any superhero movies or any stories related to superheroes.
It just does not click with me.
Most people who know me are aware of this, which is why I was so confused when everyone kept telling me to see Joker.
Well, I'm proud to say I was stubborn and ignored them all 💅
But I'm more proud to say: I actually DID finally watch Joker.........
After I watched JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX.
😮
I must admit, I only considered watching Joker Folie à Deux for two reasons:
1. It's a musical!!!
2. My queen Lady GaGa is the STAR!
I probably wouldn't have watched it had the film not been marketed as one of those things. Luckily, it was both, and this made me SO EXCITED to see it.
And the recent release of GaGa's HARLEQUIN album got me even more hype. I've been singing those songs non-stop, giving full-out performances like this to my dogs:
After listening to her album on repeat for the past week, I thought if the vibe / tone of the film matches this album, it's about to be my favorite movie.
And although it didn't end up being my favorite movie....
Some of you are actually about to hate me now...........
I liked Joker Folie à Deux better that the original Joker.
If you haven't already exited out of this post, let's get into the synopsis of Folie à Deux, and the reasons why, despite its flaws, I believe it's a stronger film than its predecessor.
Joker: Folie à Deux (Synopsis + Reactions)
I went into this movie with very little knowledge of the first one.
All I knew was what I remembered from the synopsis I read minutes before arriving at the theater: Joker was a wannabe stand-up comedian who killed some people on a bus, then killed a talk show host live on TV.
Pretty soon after the film began, I realized I probably didn't even need to read a synopsis of the first movie to "get" this one.
The main events of the first film are summarized pretty succinctly through interactions Joker has with the people around him in prison:
The guards ask him like 13 times in the first few minutes: "You got a joke for us today?"
His lawyer explains what his defense for killing 6 people will be (that the "Joker" isn't really Arthur, but a split personality he developed after suffering years of abuse as a child at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend)
Lee (GaGa's character) bluntly tells him "When I saw you on Murray Franklin, I thought 'I hope he blows this guy's brains out...' And then you did."
So even if you hadn't seen the first movie, the filmmaker does a great job of expressing the key information in a way that doesn't feel expositional, and actually helps to establish characters' personalities and further the plot.
Taking a step back, after the awesome opening animated sequence, for the next 20 minutes (could've been and definitely felt longer), we're mainly seeing Arthur's terrible life behind bars.
The runtime here is composed mostly of lengthy shots that are beautifully done, but after a while make you go "okay... i get it... he's in prison... and it sucks..."
There are zero signs of this film being a musical until, believe it or not, well AFTER Lady GaGa's first appearance on screen.
After Arthur sees her singing in a music class down the hall, she wordlessly shows her admiration for him by putting finger gun to her head and shooting herself.
For several minutes after this, the focus is on Arthur preparing for his trial. I started to worry GaGa's only line would be "You're Joker" since that's all she ever says in the trailers.
Finally, one of the guards tells Arthur he got him into the singing class that Lee was in. Arthur's bleak life suddenly starts to seem a little brighter, and so does mine as I prepare for more GaGa :)
During a break in the class, Lee beckons Arthur to her and they bond over being misunderstood, talking about how suffering abuse in their early years led to them committing crimes which landed them here.
She suddenly croaks out some lines of "Get Happy," and Arthur is thrilled to sing along with her. Lee seems just as insane as Arthur, making these two appear to be a match made in hell.
Despite the brief singing, it isn't until after this, when Arthur sees on the news that the prosecutor for his case is seeking the death penalty, the first actual musical scene occurs.
After being asked what he thinks about potentially dying, Arthur sings "For Once in My Life" while he dances around other inmates who cheer him on.
The movie finally felt like a musical -- until the scene was cut short when someone yells at Arthur to answer the question, and we realize the music was all in his head.
This is the first glimpse we see of Arthur's delusions, and they only become grander from here.
After some more trial preparation and showing the city's reaction to the news of Arthur's potential sentencing (people are actively in support of Arthur)... It's movie night at the prison.
Arthur is invested in the film they watch, but Lee is only interested in getting out of there with him.
He rejects her offer, so she discreetly sets fire to the piano in the back of the room, forcing EVERYONE to get out of there. ;)
Lee pulls Arthur away from the crowd and sings "If They Could See Me Now" as they run out the prison doors and towards the main gate, where tons of photographers are waiting to get a shot of Arthur.
They get what they want, and more, with Lee making sure she's seen and photographed!
Arthur and Lee are of course quickly separated by guards, and Arthur is thrown into solitary confinement.
Still high off the good time he had with Lee, he imagines the two of them dancing on the rooftop as Lee sings Lady GaGa's original song "Folie à Deux."
At this point, it's TOTALLY feeling like a musical, and I'm loving every second of it. But again this scene is cut short, and for a while after this, the musical elements are significantly dialed back.
Lee sneaks into Arthur's cell and tells him she's being released because Arthur is a "bad influence" on her. Lee puts clown makeup on him, saying she wants to be with "the real" him.
Before heading into a TV interview a few days later, Arthur's lawyer tells him that Lee has been talking to the press A LOT about her and Arthur's relationship, which elates him but worries his lawyer.
During the interview, when he feels the interviewer is trying to bring the "Joker" out of him, he makes a scene and sings some of "That's Entertainment" directly to the camera.
On the city streets, Lee lovingly watches Arthur on a television in a shop's window.
She sings along with him for about one line, then smashes the glass and walks away with the TV in hand.
By this point there's a clear pattern to these musical moments. You think you're about to get some incredible, full-out number like we KNOW the filmmakers are capable of achieving, but the songs are cut short or barely sung.
Anyway... Now it's finally Arthur's first day in court. At this point we're about an hour and some change into the movie. And only now does it become clear the film isn't just meant to be a musical, but a courtroom drama / legal "thriller" as well.
As someone who loves legal thrillers, musicals, and genre-mashing, this made me perk up.
However, in this first court scene, there isn't as much tension as one would expect for a courtroom drama. So now there's a whole other aspect of the film I'm already a little disappointed by.
The main point of the scene is that the prosecution argues Arthur is faking his insanity, but the way it plays out feels more like an obligatory beat to move the plot forward rather than an intense moment that changes everything.
What saved this scene, and many of the courtroom scenes that followed, is the unexpected humor that comes from the ridiculous things Arthur says and does. I actually laughed out loud quite a few times by the end of the film (some of those times, I'm not sure I was supposed to laugh)
After the first day in court ends, Arthur asks his lawyer if Lee can sit closer to him for the rest of the trial. The lawyer then drops a bomb on him: Lee has been lying to him about her identity.
She wasn't a mental patient with a troubled past, she's an educated woman from a wealthy family who recently earned her master's in psychology. She admitted herself to the facility AND checked herself out.
Arthur's lawyer insists Lee is playing him for a fool. Arthur rejects this, saying Lee is the only one who really knows him.
He imagines himself and Lee on a Sonny & Cher-esque show where they sing some of "To Love Somebody" before Lee steals the spotlight and makes it all about herself.
This being included in his fantasy shows that, despite what he says, Arthur does fear on some level that she isn't who he (and she) wants to believe she is.
After talking to Lee in the prison visitor's room, his fears are actualized.
She admits she lied, saying she only did it so he would like her.
Before he can question her any further, she tells him his lawyer is making him look like a fool, oh and also she's pregnant 🤷♀️.
As one would, he tries to ask for more information, but she cuts him off by singing a few lines of "(They Long to be) Close to You," luring him back into a deluded state as he dances and sings along with her.
In court later, Arthur becomes infuriated after hearing the testimony of his former neighbor, Sophie, who says Arthur's mother often made fun of him, and even lied to him about him having a "condition that makes him laugh uncontrollably" just so he'd feel better about himself.
Arthur fires his lawyer on the spot and chooses to defend himself, citing that she's "making [him] look like a fool."
This comes much to the delight of Lee, and in another one of Arthur's fantasy sequences, the two of them dance and sing along to "The Joker" while brutally killing the judge and prosecutors.
Again, loved this scene, and I was so glad the film was feeling like a musical again.
But Folie à Deux giveth and Folie à Deux taketh...
From here, we almost completely lose Lee's character in favor of showing the court proceedings and Arthur's prison life.
JUST as Lee was starting to become more fleshed out. 😭
As the focus shifts to Arthur's descent further into insanity, he fantasizes scenes of himself and Lee getting married, performing songs together, and hosting their show "Joker & Harley."
In each of these fantasies, he imagines Lee killing him, hinting at the fact that, deep down, he knows she's not in this "relationship" for the right reasons.
Instead of just these delusions, I really wanted to see more juxtaposition between how Lee was in real life vs how she was in his fantasies.
And further, I wanted to see how Lee herself directly contributed to and influenced his delusions.
This was such an interesting storyline that didn't get nearly the screentime it deserved.
But I digress...
Arthur's trial comes to a swift end when he, after going full Joker while acting as his own lawyer, drops the persona and says to the cameras: there is no "Joker." It's always been him, not a split personality.
Lee storms out of the courtroom, and the jury comes to their decision: he's guilty.
Arthur tries calling Lee but can't get through. He leaves her a message, singing "If You Go Away" as he asks her to come back to visit him again.
But she never returns his call, and then doesn't show up when court reconvenes and he's officially sentenced.
She's too busy doing her makeup in a Joker-esque style while she sings "Gonna Build a Mountain." She's becoming Harley Quinn.
Just as the jury finishes sentencing Arthur, a bomb explodes outside the courthouse, and he's able to escape with the help of two people dressed as him.
It seems the intention was for us to believe that Lee blew up the courtroom as an act of love so they could finally be free together, especially since she lit the piano on fire in the prison to do exactly this, and previously claimed to have "burned [her] parents' apartment building to the ground" when she was lying to Arthur about her backstory.
But when Arthur finds Lee and tells her how happy he is that they can finally start their life together (with their child 👀), she's unenthused.
She tells him it was never gonna happen; she wanted the fantasy, which he ruined by admitting Joker wasn't real.
She walks away, leaving him to be arrested as the cops close in.
And then in prison he's stabbed to death -- but MY biggest issue with the film's ending is that Lee's storyline felt super rushed.
All the right elements were there, but the speed at which we go from her leaving the courtroom to her becoming Harley Quinn to then rejecting Arthur is way too fast for any of this to land as well as it could have.
Like, although I agreed with how her arc played out, I was still confused when Lee bluntly told Arthur she wasn't going to be with him. Honestly, it even made me laugh because it just felt like it was coming out of nowhere.
If we had gotten to see her side of the story a bit more, and if her descent into madness were further fleshed out, this beat would've been a lot more poignant.
It felt the first half of the film could've easily been trimmed to make room for Lee's arc. Particularly, the overlong scenes where Arthur talks to his lawyer / the press in depth about his mental state.
Although this is Arthur's film and I understand the heavy focus on the debate over his condition, many of those early scenes felt redundant (as did the court proceedings).
Nothing narratively would have been lost if these scenes were slimmed down. A lot narratively would have been gained if the film dived deeper into Lee's arc.
That all being said... Let's get into my comparison between the two films, and WHY, despite all the ups and downs and disappointments I felt while watching, I believe this film is far stronger than the original.
Parallels in Both Films
Cinematography
The main thing I noticed as I watched the first film: the cinematography in Folie à Deux VERY closely mirrors that of the original, with several shots being direct callbacks / recreations.
This includes iconic moments on the staircase and in the elevator, which are framed almost identically in both films.
(there's a shot in the sequel that mirrors this with GaGa going up the stairs, but there is sadly no gif of it)
Watching Folie à Deux first, I was awestruck by the incredible filmmaking. However, my feelings shifted when I watched the original immediately after and realized the shots I loved so much were essentially copies from the first film.
I imagine for someone who watched the films in the intended order (like a normal person), this makes the sequel feel like it’s leaning too heavily on the original’s aesthetic.
While the cinematography is undeniably beautiful in both films, the decision to recycle so many iconic shots from Joker may understandably leave audiences feeling like Folie à Deux is less its own movie and more of an imitation of what was already done -- with a musical twist.
Which conveniently leads to my next point:
Musical Elements
Interestingly, quite a few songs from the original made an appearance in the sequel. And watching the original after seeing Folie à Deux made me believe the filmmakers wanted to make a musical all along.
There are several moments in Joker that lean into musical territory, like Arthur performing tai chi in the bathroom after his first murders, dancing on the staircase in a full Joker get-up, and most notably, him singing "That's Life" at the end of the film.
Especially after seeing this ending, I wasn't surprised the sequel was a musical.
I'm actually more surprised that people were confused by this choice.
To me, it completely makes sense and feels like a natural progression of the story (that I wish had been committed to more).
Act 3
I was shocked to see how the last act of both films played out in almost the exact same way.
In both Joker and Folie à Deux, Arthur stops acting as "Joker" when he reaches a moment of realization where he can no longer deny what he's done.
In the original film, this occurs during the talk show scene. Arthur breaks away from fully embodying his Joker persona as he admits to killing the 3 men on the subway.
In Folie à Deux, during Arthur's closing statement in court, he drops the Joker persona he's upheld to this point and admits “there is no Joker” -- it was him, Arthur, who committed the murders.
These moments of realization are followed by a random event that leads to Arthur’s temporary “freedom,” only for him to surrender willingly.
In the first film, after Arthur’s arrest, the chaos he's incited in the city works in his favor when an ambulance crashes into the cop car transporting him to prison.
His “followers” in Joker masks rescue him, pulling him from the wreckage and into a sea of other Joker look-alikes.
Despite this opportunity to disappear into the chaos and live freely, Arthur doesn’t run.
Instead, he revels in his new status for a moment, but soon after, allows himself to be captured by police.
In Folie à Deux, a bomb goes off in the courtroom just as Arthur is being sentenced, allowing him to escape.
He stumbles outside, and is quickly found by two people dressed as Joker who help him flee the scene.
This moment also offers him the chance to run away and live without consequence, aided by the very chaos he created. But once again, Arthur doesn’t take the opportunity to disappear.
Instead, after his disappointing conversation with Lee, he chooses to surrender to the police, realizing that an escape from himself isn’t what he really desires.
He WANTS the punishment. He wants to be treated terribly. It's the only fuel he has that "justifies" his anger towards the world.
Underdeveloped Supporting Female Character
After watching Folie à Deux I told my friend who watched with me that I wanted the film to further tap into Lee's character (and go all out on the musical aspect).
He thought that Lee wasn't fleshed out because she was just a part of Arthur's delusions (and that there was more than enough music, which is 100% WRONG!!!!)
He mentioned in the original, Zazie Beetz' character was treated similarly, and most of the interactions we see her having with Arthur are later revealed to be in his head.
Him telling me this is what made me decide to watch the original.
I had to figure out if Lee was real or not!
I didn't think for even one moment that Lee was a figment of Arthur's imagination -- I thought she was very real, especially since she lied to Arthur in such an extreme way just to gain access to his world.
I felt like this was a very strong representation of how people treat high-profile criminals today.
They're fascinated by them and the horrible things they've done; they love the idea of having insight into these people's twisted minds, and will sometimes stop at nothing to get it.
It's THE reason why shows like MONSTER: THE JEFFREY DAHMER STORY, and really any other true crime show or movie, are so popular.
Aside from my love for GaGa, this is why I wanted more out of Lee's character. Her storyline was tapping into something we don't often see: how one's obsession with "sickness" is a sickness in and of itself.
But back to my friend's theory -- after watching the original film, I'm even more convinced Lee was real.
The original doesn't show Sophie interacting with anyone aside from Arthur, and no one other than Arthur even acknowledges her. Additionally, his scenes with her often end on a shot that reveals he's by himself (although we don't realize this in the moment).
In the sequel, Lee frequently has interactions with others, people directly reference her to Arthur, there's real-world evidence that she exists (like the newspaper articles about her), and most importantly, we see scenes of her by herself.
We don't have this same level of focus on Sophie in the original film, which leads me to believe Lee is definitely real.
I think the main reason my friend, and others, have this theory is because of how underutilized Lee is in the film.
Based on some of the leaked shots that came out well before the release of this movie, it seems to suggest there were several deleted scenes that focused more on Lee's arc and her own descent into madness.
Both of the above shots didn't make it into the film (yet were used in the trailers!)
And there's even this deleted scene from what appears to be the end of the movie that, in my opinion, strongly suggests there WAS a storyline for her outside of her relationship with Arthur:
These likely were cut for time (the movie is nearly 2.5 hours).
But if the film had kept her personal arc in, I wouldn't have cared how long the movie was -- and I don't think anyone else would've either -- because diving into her arc more would've really saved the plot. (and, from what it looks like, added more musical moments like I wanted all along!!!)
Why the Sequel is Stronger
Now, for the most controversial part of this blog...
I'm not ashamed to say that, despite the flaws I mentioned and the fact that the film didn't live up to the expectations I and most people had, I enjoyed the sequel more than the original.
While I can 100% agree that the original had a stronger narrative structure and plot, what I like about both films (but is more present in the sequel) is that the filmmaker is taking a big risk.
Both films are innovative and completely different from other movies released at the time. But Folie à Deux really "goes for it" in a way the original doesn't -- even though it doesn't fully commit.
I understand why the filmmakers chose, in the sequel, to lean more heavily on the aspects of the original film that worked so well and less on the risky musical courtroom drama aspects.
They were trying to avoid losing the fans of the original, which would've likely happened had this film gone full-on musical or courtroom drama AND been marketed that way.
But playing this middle ground of risk-taking and playing it safe just leads to anyone who watches this film to be disappointed in some way.
People who wanted a musical are disappointed in the lack of full-out musical numbers, and people who wanted a pure sequel are disappointed there's so much singing in their moody movie.
Despite this disappointment, I appreciated and enjoyed the sequel more because of how unique, different, and risky it was, even though it wasn't nearly as well-structured narratively as the original.
Are you planning to see Joker: Folie à Deux this weekend?
How do you feel about it being a musical? 👀
Leave your answer down below!
Enjoyed the JOker and sounds like I will enjoy this one. Musicals are not for me, but if it's limited to a few songs, then I can handle that.
Harsh defense for a movie you gave two stars on Letterboxd.