Joker: Folie à Deux premiered worldwide last week, and calling its release a disaster would be putting it mildly. For the first time in a while, both fans and critics are in agreement: the movie is bad.

With a dismal 33% critic score and 31% audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes, the film has also flopped at the box office during its opening weekend. This is especially concerning given its massive $200 million budget—three times the cost of the original film.

The film has also experienced significant audience walkouts, with some viewers even requesting refunds. Many have described it as an incoherent mess, and looking back at its development, it’s clear that it was destined to be chaotic from the start.

Now, let’s dive into the analysis. As you may know, the original Joker was intended to be a standalone film, and Todd Phillips was reluctant to create a sequel until something unusual occurred.

According to Warner Bros. insiders, the idea for the sequel came to Joaquin Phoenix in a dream, and he was instrumental in advocating for the project. Additionally, Phillips was granted considerable creative freedom and final cut rights for Joker: Folie à Deux, with no test screenings conducted to avoid revealing spoilers, even though the film’s plot isn’t particularly spoiler-heavy.

Unlike the first Joker, which had former DC Films president Walter Hamada involved, there were no DC executives involved in greenlighting this sequel due to the internal turmoil at DC during that period. Phillips remarked that James Gunn and the new DC Studios leadership had no involvement with the film, stating in a somewhat smug tone:

With all due respect to [Gunn and Safran], This is kind of a Warner Brothers movie, and that’s them also wanting it to be like, ‘Okay, Todd did his thing. Let Todd continue to do his thing.

Ultimately, THR reports that while Gunn provided Todd Phillips with notes on the movie, Phillips chose to disregard them. He wanted to distance himself from DC and maintained that attitude right up until the film’s release, according to one insider.

No one could get through to Todd. And the one thing about genre stuff: If you don’t listen and pay attention to what the fan expectations are, you’re going to fail.

One of the movie’s biggest “sins” is that it is, in fact, a musical. This aspect was downplayed throughout the marketing campaign by both Todd Phillips and Lady Gaga.

They apparently realized early on that fans might not respond positively to this revelation. In defense of the film, Phillips claimed that it isn’t a musical, despite clearly describing it as one. His exact statement was:

Most of the music in the movie is really just dialogue. It’s just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead.

Phillips reportedly considered staging a Broadway show before deciding to create a movie. So if you think the “musical” aspect of Joker 2 was just a misunderstanding, you’d be mistaken—it was primarily conceived as a musical first and a Joker film second.

For the original Joker, the budget was limited to $55 million, with co-financiers like Bron and Village Roadshow helping to mitigate financial risks. However, for the sequel, under David Zaslav’s leadership, there is only one co-financier, Domain, involved to keep outgoing funds to a minimum.

The movie is said to have cost around $200 million to produce, with both Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga receiving substantial paychecks. Phoenix’s reported salary was about $20 million, while Lady Gaga earned around $12 million. Notably, she signed on for the film before the script was even completed.

Now, let’s discuss the ending. Phillips had always made it clear that he never intended to transform Arthur Fleck into “The Clown Prince of Crime” before the film’s premiere.

However, no one could have predicted that the character would undergo a humiliating ritual, being used and abused in the most degrading ways before ultimately being killed by “the real Joker.”

The film concludes with a clichéd scene of the real Joker carving a “Glasgow Smile” on himself. Reports indicate that the original film was meant to end with Phoenix’s Joker doing the same, but Christopher Nolan blocked that idea. Now that Nolan has left Warner Bros., Phillips had the freedom to use that ending in a different—and less effective—manner.

The movie opened domestically at $37.8 million, falling short of Morbius and The Marvels, and ultimately received a “D” cinema score—the lowest for any superhero film. However, to be fair, Joker 2 isn’t really a superhero movie; it’s not even a direct adaptation. The characters deviate so far from the source material that it feels more like cheap fan fiction.

Adding to the suspicion that Phillips may have intentionally crafted this outcome is the fact that he chose to seclude himself on a ranch during the film’s premiere, likely anticipating the backlash against both himself and the movie.

Fans have already begun to lash out at the director on social media, which is never warranted. At the end of the day, it’s just a movie, and a disappointing one at that. The embarrassment of having the biggest superhero flop in the past 20 years is more than enough.

What are your thoughts on this situation? Let us know in the comments below!