Joker 2 Review

Joker 2 Review, Joker 2, proves that time really does make fools of us all. The first Joker movie was one of those rare moments of cinematic serendipity where everything that should have been wrong somehow came together to become absolutely right. A low-budget origin story about a Batman villain that nobody asked for turned out way better than it had any right to be. In a sea of oversaturated CGI sludge, The Joker dared to tell a small, intimate, complex story of a man pushed into madness and despair by a society that was blindly indifferent to him.

🎭 A Perfect One-and-Done Story

It was a movie with a wonderfully unreliable narrator, driven by a superb performance by Joaquin Phoenix and an ending that left the audience with more questions than answers. It was a perfect one-and-done movie that told its story and told it well. No need to do anything more with a character like that because it would just cheapen the experience. So, I was a bit perplexed when I found out that Joker was getting a sequel and even more concerned when it was announced as a musical co-starring Lady Gaga.

🤔 Doubts About a Sequel

I tried to suppress my doubts and ignore that nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that this movie was fundamentally a bad idea. Surely to goodness, Todd Phillips knows what he’s doing and wouldn’t just churn out some lame cash-grab sequel that undermines the integrity of the original, right? Wrong. I sat down and watched it, and if all two and a half hours of Joker 2 proves anything at all, it’s that sometimes you really ought to listen to your instincts.

🎥 A Dull and Bloated Plot

Yeah, there’s definitely good elements in there. You can see that talented people were working on this movie, and the ending is definitely going to get people talking. But overall, Joker 2 felt like a dull, bloated, and ultimately unnecessary movie that failed to answer the question that’s dogged it since the beginning: why does this film even exist? The story picks up shortly after the events of the first film where Arthur Fleck has been arrested and locked up in Arkham Asylum while he awaits trial for all the murders that he committed.

❤️ A Twisted Romance Unfolds

His lawyer wants to plead insanity while the prosecutor, Harvey Dent, is pushing for the death penalty. Bad times indeed. But while he’s at Arkham, he meets a young woman named Lee Quinn and soon starts a bit of a romance with her. But is it really Arthur that she’s into, or is it the Joker personality, and what’s her true motivation for being there? Well, you’ll have to wait and find out. Anyway, the case goes to trial, and Arthur’s soon confronted by the reality of what he did in the first film by going over most of the key events again.

🧠 Questioning Responsibility

But how responsible was he for what happened? Was the Joker really a split personality that took over him, or just part of him all along? And what will Harley Quinn think of him when she finds out the truth? Joker 2 is kind of a frustrating movie to watch because in a lot of ways, I can see how hard many of the people involved are trying to make it work. Joaquin Phoenix delivers the same intense, compelling performance as the first movie, arguably a bit too similar, but he’s definitely given the role his all.

🌟 Lady Gaga Shines

Some of his scenes are genuinely compelling. Lady Gaga, much to my surprise, also turns in a good performance as a crazy super fan enamored by the flamboyant persona of the Joker rather than the flesh-and-blood man behind it. If you’re inclined to look for themes in this film, it’s an interesting insight into the intoxicating danger of celebrity and the vast gulf between myth and reality. The two actors play well off each other, and the kind of twisted romance they cultivate seems pretty appropriate for a movie like this.

🎶 Musical Numbers Distract

The film even has you questioning which of their interactions even happened for real. It doesn’t do it as effectively as the first movie, but it’s something at least. Then there’s the musical numbers that pepper the narrative. I can’t believe I’m saying this because normally I hate musicals, but I actually kind of enjoyed the sheer spectacle and performances while I was watching them. Lady Gaga clearly doesn’t have any trouble belting out her numbers.

⚖️ Undoing the Original’s Magic

But the more I think about it, the more I see them as shiny objects trying to distract from what’s actually a pretty stodgy, bloated, and uninspiring drama. The courtroom scenes are basically just a dry recap of the first film, telling us things that we mostly already know and destroying that awesome sense of ambiguity and unreality that made it such a fascinating story to pick apart. Now we know exactly what did and didn’t happen, and man, it feels like such a waste.

😐 Character Regression

The biggest criticism is the deconstruction of Arthur himself. The ending of the first movie saw him fully embrace his Joker persona, shedding the last remnants of his old weak, victimized personality and embracing the madness of the world around him. It was a logical endpoint for a man who had been desperately trying to swim against the tide for most of the film. All of that good work seems to have been undone here because for most of the film, he’s reverted to the same weak, timid Arthur that he was at the start of the first movie.

❓ An Unnecessary Sequel

Most disappointingly of all, I actually found myself kind of bored and checked out at times, something that absolutely never happened with the original movie. The question hanging over Joker 2 was: is this a story that really needed to be told, or is it just a bunch of talented people doing their best to elevate a studio-mandated sequel into something that it isn’t? Well, now that I’ve seen it, I’m afraid I know the answer, and it’s not a good one.