Joker 2 Gets The Most Surprising Fan

By Chris Snellgrove | Published

Joker 2 is one of the biggest failures in Hollywood history, a film that was both a commercial bomb and a critical dud. The general consensus is that this movie was a complete misfire, but now, one of the greatest living directors has come out as a huge fan of this controversial film. Joker 2 is actually beloved by Quentin Tarantino, the Pulp Fiction maestro who recently declared on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, “I really, really liked it…like, tremendously.”

Ironically, part of why Joker 2 managed to impress Quentin Tarantino is that he thought he would be an “arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is.” The veteran director noted that he’s “just nihilistic enough” to enjoy a film “that’s like a big, giant mess to some degree.” But to his own surprise, “I really got caught up in it.”

A Backhanded Compliment With Good Intentions

Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino

Just what was it about Joker 2 that managed to impress Quentin Tarantino? He noted how much he enjoyed “the musical sequences,” though he gave the music itself something of a backhanded compliment. “The more banal the songs were, the better they were,” he said before describing how the film made him listen to the lyrics of the song “For Once in My Life” in a brand new way.

A more direct reason that Joker 2 may have impressed Quentin Tarantino is that he thought that it took inspiration from a previous film that he worked on. “This seems pretty fucking indebted to Natural Born Killers, which I wrote,” he said before giving director Todd Phillips some very high praise: “That’s the Natural Born Killers I would have dreamed of seeing.”

Regarding Joker 2’s central duo of characters, Quentin Tarantino thought Joker and Harley Quinn were evocative of his Mickey and Mallory characters from Natural Born Killers, and he was quick to point out how much he loved the performances of and direction of this troubled supervillain sequel. Referencing the character played by Woody Harrelson, the Kill Bill director declared that this new film “was the fever dream of Mickey Knox.”

A Twisted Sense Of Humor

Joker 2 appears to have resonated with Quentin Tarantino for another important reason: his off-kilter sense of humor. “I thought it was really funny,” he said, and declared how seeing the movie in an “almost empty IMAX theater” meant that he could safely “laugh without bothering everybody.” He then confirmed what you were probably suspecting when reading how funny he thought the depressing film was: “I know I’m laughing at scenes that other people wouldn’t be laughing at.”

The two people typically blamed for Joker 2’s failures are ones that Quentin Tarantino really singled out for praise: Joaquin Phoenix and Todd Phillips. With regards to Phoenix, the director declared that the actor gave “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life in this movie.” Phoenix notably won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the first movie, and it sounds like the acclaimed director thought his follow-up performance was equally powerful.

Praise For Todd Phillips

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Joker 2

But the strangest praise for Joker 2 that Quentin Tarantino offered was reserved for Phillips, whom he compared to the titular clown prince of crime: “the Joker directed the movie.” The Once Upon a Time In Hollywood director described how the film’s concept as well as “spending the studio’s money,” effectively emulates what the actual Joker would have done in his situation. It’s worth noting here that Phillips previously claimed that he wanted the movie to feel as if actual crazy people directed it…in that regard, Tarantino seems to think it was a success.

Continuing to compare the director to the protagonist of Joker 2, Quentin Tarantino praised how the movie pranked “comic book geeks,” an audience that he thinks Phillips is “saying f*** you” to. He thinks that same vulgar sentiment is directed at the audience, Hollywood, and “anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers.” This is the common online edge lord defense of the film, but Tarantino presents that defense with complete earnestness. 

Given his famous thoughts about Superman in Kill Bill, it’s fair to say that Quentin Tarantino is well-versed in superhero cinema. Therefore, he may or may not count himself among the “comic book geeks” that Joker 2 so thoroughly disappointed and degraded. But he seems very pleased by the final result, and may we be the first to say the obvious: that makes one of us.

Source: Bret Easton Ellis

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