31
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No one’s laughing now: ‘Joker Folie à Deux’ falls down with $39m-$40m opening: How the sequel went sideways
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- Title
- 'Joker: Folie à Deux' Gets 'D' CinemaScore, 1/2 Star On PostTrak On Way To $47M Opening: No One's Laughing Now - Saturday Box Office
- Authors
- Anthony D'Alessandro
- Published
- Oct 5 2024
- Word count
- 2641 words
Joker 2: Joke Harder received a D cinemascore, which is actually lower than what Megalopolis received last week. So now Joker 2 has the worst audience scores of the year.
Seems to be total rejection happening. I remember there being a lot of hype when the first trailer came out, but as soon as the Venice Film Festival premiere happened hyped died down. Reviews were mixed-negative coming out of the festival (the same festival that heavily acclaimed the first Joker), and once tickets went on sale pre-sales were very muted. As more reviews were posted the critical aggregate scores continued to go down. Once the movie actually opened, word of mouth was incredibly toxic.
This is opening lower than last year's The Marvels, making it another sequel to a billion dollar hit to completely fall off.
I saw the film. I thought it was terrible and I've been a defender of Todd Phillips and the first Joker. I thought Phillips was actually doing pretty interesting things with his film War Dogs and Joker. For some reason, instead of using the success of the first Joker to greenlight an original project, he decided to make a sequel that no one likes and will lose a lot of money. I thought the musical sequences were poorly integrated, I don't think the music has any narrative or thematic meaning. And I don't think anything of value happens throughout the film. The visuals aren't even that interesting during the musical sequences. That it basically undoes the themes of the first Joker would be interesting if they actually managed to pull it off the way Johnson did exactly that with The Last Jedi.
I still think it's insane how reviews matter so much to reception to movies to this day that it can tank a sequel to a billion dollar box office. It doesn't seem like they have anywhere near the same effect on other medium like music, video games, and books. I wonder if the massive increase in cost for a medium that's already "cost inefficient" (previously sme $15 ticket for 2-3 hours of entertainment. Before food and refreshments) means that the audience is more sensitive to spending their time on anything but a stellar movie.
I'm honestly just surprised so many people still go to physical theatres to watch movies. You can get a decent home theatre setup that will be much more comfortable and enjoyable for under 1000 bucks. That and you get to control how your movie watching experience goes, and have snacks and drinks for free.
I go to the theater for the movies I love to see, but don't have the patience for at home. And then I pick the slow times when it's quiet so there's less chance of annoying people in the room.
I don't feel like it should be that surprising that many people can afford to spend under $50 per trip to the movies but not $1000 at once to set up a home theater. And I say this as someone who goes to the movies like once a year at most.
I was including the cost of the TV in that price. And really that's still more than you need to spend to get a nice experience. I would imagine most people already have a fairly nice TV since they're pretty cheap and streaming TV shows is likely something someone who goes to the Theater regularly would do.
It wouldn't take many family trips to the theater to start to add up to a fairly quality sound bar surround sound system.
The cost of a TV cannot be so cheap that you can assume everyone already has one suited for a decent home theater and so expensive that it's a significant portion of that $1000. There's still an obvious difference between periodically spending a comparatively small sum on going to the movies and dropping a large sum up front on a home theater -- even if it ultimately saves you money, it's not necessarily more affordable in the moment for many people.
Ah, I was wondering if there was something about your circumstances that I didn’t understand! Yeah if you’re paying for 4+ tickets for each viewing experience, then a home setup looks much more manageable.
But for me, I don’t have kids, so the number of movie trips I’d need to justify buying a home setup would likely mean nearly a decade before I break even. And I’m not sure warranties on a TV or soundbar would cover that long.
I also think that the experience I want from a cinema isn’t financially feasible for me or my renting situation. When I go to the cinema, 80-90% of the time I’m not going for the standard cinema screen size, I’m going for the “Xtreemscreen” extra big one. So a TV of any size just doesn’t cut it, and I don’t have a space or a wall big enough for a projector to achieve what I want. Interestingly I think my VR headset might come close, but I don’t know I could sit for a movie length without a little eye strain, based on both the screen distance and the low-ish resolution of the headset
I've been watching a movie a week in VR with friends for about 4 years now, and I actually really like it. First on a quest 1, although I did recently upgrade to a quest 3. The screen dooring on the quest 1 was noticeable but also pretty easy to ignore.
It does make me reluctant to pick especially long movies, but anything in the 1.5-2 hour range is generally fine.
Bigscreen VR is the app I'd recommend, if you're interested in giving it a go.
Is there a home theater which prevents my spouse from asking me to hold the couch up while she vacuums, teach my 1-year-old to poop in the toilet by himself and release the dogs on the Jehova Witnesses before they ring the doorbell? :P
I feel like I'm getting "but sometimes" a lot on this point. I wasn't trying to offend movie goers or anything... I didn't realize this was something that people took so seriously. I guess I don't experience movies the same way as other people. A home movie experience is 10x more enjoyable for me because I'm comfortable in my own home and can focus on the movie, in a public environment it's often not going to be as comfortable.
Part of what I argue against with this type of thinking is that without movie theaters you wouldn’t be watching a lot of what you watch at home.
No one is getting aggravated certainly not me!
It's just think that this will depend on everyone's living situation.
I have a nice setup at home (55” OLED TV with surround sound) and I still go to the movies, but only at IMAX. That’s the only experience I can’t replicate at home, and even then IMAX is sometimes hit or miss, depending on if the movie has good sound levels & mixing or not. And the chairs are also supremely uncomfortable for anything longer than 1h30m.
But truth be told, some movies are made for the big screen. Off the top of my head, these are the movies that simply don’t translate that well to a TV, and which I am glad to have seen them on a big screen: Blade Runner 2049, both Dune movies, Interstellar, Fury Road
For me, movies are a chance to focus on what I'm watching. No phone, no doorbell - the only interruption is to pee
a) some people live in apartments or shared housing
b) the theater experience is just different. In particular I focus more on the movie in theaters. You can’t have a theater level audio experience without your neighbors hating your guts.
To each there own and maybe my tastes are admittedly becoming more niche as people begin to prefer home theaters but:
that is an insanely subjective take that I feel is being provided as fact.
Just to add a counterbalance to why some people, myself included, still prefer theaters: the bigness and spectacle of it all - no living room will have a screen measured in feet and a sound system and acoustic environment that will allow audio to shine across its full range, the cinematic feeling that commercial quality projectors and screens provide - analogous to vinyl records there's almost a graininess to the image that imbues a sense of really experiencing something "hand crafted," the ability of a skilled projectionist to show a film as the director intended it to be seen - your TV will likely never be calibrated in a way that will give the result the director was looking for, and the shared experience of it all - the more isolated that we become in our living rooms the more we miss out on the sensation of experiencing an event together socially - one hundred people all enraptured by the same thing, all feeling something different about it, but feeling together nonetheless. An audience brought to tears, or laughing their hearts out, or collectively experiencing the tragic brought before their eyes.
I could write a love letter to movie theater cinema. We might gain small things by moving films into the living room but we lose a lot that, frankly, is an extension of the artform not replicable in the home environment. Movie theaters might not be for you but they will continue to exist for people who see viewing a film as much more than just watching a moving picture on a screen.
I'll be 100% honest, I really wasn't expecting this to be such a big deal to people. I made my comment in passing based on my personal feelings about theaters. I didn't think this warranted this big of a discussion and I wasn't expecting everyone to get so up in arms over my "hot take"
Keep going to the theater, it really isn't that deep.
I really hope my comment didn't come off as hostile and re-reading it i'm not seeing that but
this does seem to have taken an unnecessary tone.
I obviously love going to the theater and wanted to express that as a counterpoint to you having brushed it off and I tried to do that in a way that gives illustration to my own opinion, there's no need to feel attacked by it or respond to me in that way
It's just the culmination of around 10 different people replying to me telling me why the theater is actually way better than watching movies at home and it's silly to think overwise. I just came off a 12 hour shift and I got a little snarky about it.
I thought it was a very beautifully written comment.
Unless I have the means to dedicate an entire room without windows, a complete Dolty Atmos system and a high quality projector, then I am not getting a similar experience.
I have a decent setup at home and watch a movie almost every day, but it is still just in my living room. A theater is still an unique focused immersive way to watch a movie that isn't really feasible for most people at home.
Maybe not the most fitting compassion, but while it is also cheaper to just eat takeout at home than go out to eat, people still do and pay extra for that because it is not just about the food itself.
As someone who lives in an apartment with floor to ceiling windows in every room but the bathroom, I think the curtains to get movie theater-like darkness would cost more than my TV easily lol
Wait what, how do you get free drinks and snacks at home? :-)
I was just making the point of how ridiculously overpriced movie theater concessions are. You could get a 5 pound bag of Skittles for what they charge for a couple small bags
It's marked up because they lose money on ticket sales otherwise. Studios take a huge cut, especially in the first week or two.
I understand the concept. It doesn't mean I have to like it.
next time I watch a movie at home, OBLIVIATOR is in charge of the popcorn
I go monthly, but I’m a bit of a cinephile. Not going would be nearly heretical. Maybe I’m just stuck in my ways.
There's still a social experience aspect to it, and you see a lot of social activities bouncing back hard after COVID. I went to see The Wild Robot with friends and that really can't be beat, even if we indeed went back to an apartment with a decent TV setup. Just being able to get out for a night every now and then can be nice.
I don't think reviews matter that much, or at least not nearly as much for every type of film. Not uncommon to have a movie sell tickets like crazy despite critics hating it, and the reverse where some artsy film gets raving reviews from the film critics but don't sell any tickets. Seems like word of mouth still matter, and basically whatever that makes people decide to want to go watch a movie which can be everything from the weather, whether they liked the previous movie in the series or tons of other reasons. From my experience, only filmbuffs really pay much attention to reviews anyways and often after they have seen it.
Reviews absolutely can have a big effect on video games. The way this effect manifests differs depending on what segment of the industry you're in (reviews matter LOADS to an indie game in a way they don't necessarily matter to many AAA titles), but this is also true in film. The reviews for the latest marvel movie matter a lot less to their box office than they do to something independent or even just not attached to a big franchise.
reviews for indies are almost inverted in a way. you will rarely expect professional reviews without a huge buzz, so you fall under "social media rules" in a way. a few angry fans making an incoherent rant that tells you nothing about the game can affect statistics on a storefront. So you're more beholden to an algorithm and not necessarily the quality of your product.
There is of course Rotten Tomatoes aggregating similar things, but that's an external website and I agree with your point there. critical reception can counteract a weak user score and vice versa. A bad critic reviews won't tank a Michael Bay film most of the time because he's a brand who's not trying to sell you "peak cinema".
I'm quite surprised by just how negative this response has been. Personally, I thought it a very interesting film that surpassed the first, and while it attempts something wholly different to the first film (so I expected at least some backlash from those expecting that) I think in its own right it's something quite new and interesting.
I'm glad that they avoided any sequel branding, as this film didn't provide a sequel-like experience or any of what the original did but seemed to act more as a reaction to the first film and its response (to the extent of the first film canonically, to an extent literally being referred to as a "TV-movie" in this). As opposed to the original acting as an excellent thriller providing an update to that so-loved Taxi Driver formula, this new film was brave in subverting that, almost staring down the camera and asking why we respond to a film like that, or similar real-world events, in such ways. It's definitely one that'll take me a rewatch or two to process fully but I'm really glad that I saw it and really disappointed that it is being cast as some worthless failure despite boldly trying something new; may willingness to try such risks on such a huge budget not be reduced as a result.
I went and saw it, and I just had three complaints:
Harley/Lee is very unexplored (and as a Lady Gaga fan I found it outrageous she had such little relevant screentime). It would have been fine if a third movie was planned, but this was the final movie so we won't see who Harley Quinn actually is in this universe.
Some (not all!) songs felt like filler to extend the movie's runtime, I didn't feel like they were important narratively, nor were they fun to listen to or watch.
Lastly, spoilers ahead:
Spoilers in here
I felt like the ending made no sense. We saw Arthur bounce back and forth between embracing his Joker identity and coming to terms with the reality of what he actually did, especially after Ricky gets strangled to death by the guards after he tried to defend Arthur.He breaks down and realizes being Joker would only bring pain, but then he loses Harley (who was in love with the Joker, not Arthur) and eventually gets killed in prison with no resolution.
Both paths he could have taken led to harm, and he gets nothing out of it.
Also, did Harley lie when she said she's pregnant? That was such important info that was thrown out there, it makes me feel like she lied there but I don't know anymore.
I wanted this movie to either be an movie where the bad guys (Joker and Harley) get away with anything and everything so we could have an hour or two of entertaining chaos, or at least a path to reform for Arthur, causing a universe where the Joker never really existed. We got neither (assuming either Lee's baby becomes Joker, or Arthur's killer is the actual Joker we see in the Batman media).
EDIT: Turns out that the movie is intentionally unsatisfying - people say it's meant to be commentary and criticism of those who idolized Joker in the first film. Cool, I guess? How many people were actually doing that?
That does mean that people who just wanted to see a good film got nothing out of it because the movie was consumed by this meta-commentary-whatever. I genuinely don't like this idea, hope other directors don't do this.
All in all, I don't regret seeing it, but I did leave the movie theater confused and a bit disappointed.
How many people idolized Travis Bickle despite the obvious there as well? I'm sure there were plenty for as big as the movie was.
Not really? Like they're still fringe among the fringe by any definition. They're louder now because we amplify fringe voices for outrage bait (I CAN'T BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE SAYING THIS! kind of stuff), but the kind of person who's idolizing these people isn't a significant portion of the population, or of the people who saw the first film, nor would they be that different if you didn't make it.
Makes it a very strange choice narratively to do what they did.
I'm intrigued by this, because the only review I've seen (apart from general public perception and memes) is Kermode and Mayo's review, where Mark Kermode in particular thought it was better than the original, although thought it would probably be worse received.
In fairness, I haven't seen the original, and I probably won't see this one, but the harsh criticism coupled with the occasional positive review makes me a lot more interested in seeing it.
Having seen both of them, I think the sequel gets this backlash because it’s so different than the first part, both tonally and narratively.
If the first part was a more standard fare movie (basically King of Comedy rolled up into Taxi Driver, beat for beat) this one focuses more on deconstructing the character. It’s a lot more of a character study movie.
It could have been shorter, more focused, but it is not a genuinely bad movie. It simply doesn’t meet the character & story expectations that the first movie laid out. To put it a different way: if the first movie was great for satisfying Batman fans, the sequel gives them nothing at all.
In fairness, that matches a lot with what Kermode was saying — he seemed sceptical that it would appeal to many of the fans of the original film.
It does not, and without diving into spoiler territory, the trailers also painted a very different picture (keeping the aforementioned expectations in mind) than what was delivered.
When subverting expectations goes wrong. The director himself has said he has no interest in the DC universe and only took on DC intellectual property to bring more eyeballs to his movie. This feels similar to the 4th matrix which the wachowskis implied in the film itself the studio wanted another matrix and was going to do it with or without them so they said “oh yeh here’s your movie chumps”.
The first one was a terrible ripoff of a mediocre film, I don't know how anyone expected this one to be any good.
I liked it.
Could you elaborate on what you enjoyed about the film? I haven't seen many positive opinions.