DC’s Next Hit Film Deliberately Makes No Sense
Ever since it was announced, nobody has known quite what to make of Joker 2, a movie that brings back Joaquin Phoenix’s title character in a musical co-starring Lady Gaga. Now, it sounds like the movie itself will be just as chaotic as its premise, with a pinwheeling plot that takes our characters from one weird set-piece to another. According to director Todd Phillips, the chaos is purposeful this is a movie that deliberately makes no sense: “The goal of this movie is to make it feel like it was made by crazy people.”
Todd Phillips Is Equal Parts Insane And Brilliant
If you aren’t a fan of the successful filmmaker, you might already think it was made by a crazy person. However, this is one director who seems a bit like the Joker himself: his craziness is mixed with his genius. Love him or hate him, Phillips is one of the most successful Hollywood directors, turning innocuous-sounding movies like Road Trip and The Hangover into blockbuster box office hits, and Joker 2 will probably be no different.
Joker’s Runaway Success
With that being said, Joker seemed like his most ambitious project yet: he wanted to create a movie about Batman’s funniest and most famous villain, but one without any humor and without any Dark Knight. The concept sounds frankly terrible on paper, but Phillips’ movie about this killer clown went on to earn over a billion dollars at the box office. That kind of success made Joker 2 inevitable, but it sounds like the director is taking another risk yet again by creating a sequel that refuses to follow in the footsteps of the earlier film.
Folie à Deux Continues The Story
The basic premise of Joker 2 is that it takes place two years after the first movie, with Arthur Fleck rotting in captivity until he meets fan-girl and fellow patient Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (played by Lady Gaga). This newfound relationship is enough to make Arthur stop taking his medicine so he can go on a musical journey with Quinn, one that will take them through the streets, the courts, and even onto a variety show where they are treated like violent celebs. Oh, and the whole movie actually opens with a cartoon inspired by Looney Tunes, which only seems fitting for a deliberately nonsensical film.
A Vibe-Driven Vehicle
Phillips insists that Joker 2 will make you feel like “the inmates are running the asylum,” and the sequel sounds similarly terrible on paper … like, a musical about a comic book murderer already seems crazy enough, and making the whole plot something out of a fever dream could potentially spell disaster. But our suspicion is that Phillips has his fingers on the pulse here: younger audiences in particular respond to the vibes of a film as much (if not more) than the plot. That’s why the first movie has been memed to death, and it sounds like the sequel may be entirely vibes-driven from scene to scene.
So Crazy, It Just Might Work
Like so many other Todd Phillips projects, Joker 2 sounds crazy, but he has more than earned the benefit of the doubt. This may be a movie where the inmates are running the asylum, but when the inmates are as talented as Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, we’re ready to see what kind of madhouse they create. It certainly can’t be worse than Warner-Discovery as a whole, a studio that has seemingly already been run by crazy people ever since the merger in 2022.
Source: Variety
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