Legendary Director Praises Joker 2 Despite Everyone Hating It
The reviews for Joker: Folie à Deux prove that nobody is laughing: the film is already a critical failure and it’s well on its way to being a commercial bomb, especially in light of the first film’s stratospheric success. We started to think you’d have to be pretty darn crazy to like this clownish sequel, but it turns out that one of the movie’s biggest defenders is also one of the biggest names in Hollywood.
Francis Frod Coppola Liked Joker 2
Francis Frod Coppola, director of the similarly-maligned Megalopolis, took to Instagram to praise Joker 2 director Todd Phillips for consistently being “one step ahead of the audience never doing what they expect.”
Via Instagram, Francis Ford Coppola was relatively compact in his praise of Joker 2, but he implicitly enjoyed it, with the director noting how Todd Phillips’ “films always amaze me and I enjoy them thoroughly.”
He cited The Hangover as the first move where Phillips began veering away from audience expectations. He then offered his congratulations to this beleaguered supervillain sequel, one that the venerable director has a personal connection to.
Francis Ford Coppola Has A History
In that same Francis Ford Coppola Instagram post about Joker 2, he mentioned a conversation he had with this film’s DP.
That DP (Lawrence Sher) disclosed to the acclaimed director that the latest Phillips film is visually inspired by One From the Heart.
This was, of course, the 1982 film by Coppola which featured heavy amounts of glitz, glamour, music, drama, and other key ingredients re-used to utter failure for Phillips’ recent film.
Why Would He Have Liked Joker 2
Given how short and to the point Francis Ford Coppola’s praise of Joker 2 was, we can only take a few educated guesses at what he would have enjoyed about the film.
The most obvious fact is that (for better or for worse) Phillips defied both the studio and the audience by delivering a sequel completely unlike the movie that came before.
Coppola certainly had to fight tooth and nail to bring Megalopolis to theaters, and he may respect Phillips for being able to so successfully escape the confining umbrella of studio expectations.
Can’t Tell A Bad Movie, Kind of Like Megalopolis?
Of course, the far less charitable read of why Francis Ford Coppola appreciated Joker 2 is that the Hollywood icon may have simply lost his nose for which movies are good and which movies are bad.
His long-awaited Megalopolis currently has a D+ Cinemascore as well as a 46 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. Given that he has such a stinker at the top of his resume, it makes more sense that Coppola would dig Joker 2, a movie with a D Cinemascore (the first comic book movie to earn that score) and a 33 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
Joker 2 Just That Bad
At the end of the day, winning over Francis Ford Coppola won’t mean much if Joker 2 fails to find an audience of eager fans.
The first film was proof that Warner Bros. could create compelling comic content without featuring Batman, which could theoretically open up an entire film franchise of solo villain movies.
It’s the kind of cinematic opportunity Sony has been trying to pursue for years, but Warner Bros. effectively closed this door by releasing a movie that makes Morbius look like a masterpiece.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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