The Joker's On You

Why Joker: Folie à Deux Turned Against its Fans

This film essay is a guest contribution from Joseph Holmes.

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The much-anticipated sequel to the first Joker film has been accused of being an intentional hate letter to fans of the original. But the truth is likely much more complicated, and more sad.

The first Joker film was controversial immediately upon its release in 2019. The movie followed a kind but mentally ill loner named Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) on his path to becoming the famous Batman villain. It was criticized for giving a sympathetic backstory to a white male serial killer at a time of growing conversations around toxic masculinity and male violence.  As Time reported:

Critics who saw Joker during its run at the Venice and Toronto film festivals in late August and early September, respectively, have called it “dangerous”, “deeply troubling” and “a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels.” In a review that prompted a flood of angry reactions from the movie’s defenders, TIME’s film critic Stephanie Zacharek wrote: “In America, there’s a mass shooting or attempted act of violence by a guy like Arthur practically every other week. And yet we’re supposed to feel some sympathy for Arthur, the troubled lamb; he just hasn’t had enough love.

Not everyone was convinced. Sure, the Joker does give you reasons to empathize with how its titular protagonist might turn into a bad guy. He struggles with mental health, he’s bullied, etc. But the film’s third act alienates you from him by putting you in the shoes of sympathetic people who are terrified by him and horrified by his actions. Such as the midget Gary Puddles, Arthur’s neighbor Sophie, and even a young Bruce Wayne–who’s parents are killed by a Joker acolyte.

Director Todd Phillips made a similar point defending the first film:

People said it's irresponsible, its use of violence. And I always saw it quite literally the opposite. I thought it was responsible because it was showing the actual real-world effects of violence. It wasn't glamorizing gun use in my mind. It was actually showing, "Oh my God, this is brutal." And I think the reality of it maybe is what turned people off, the people that were turned off.

But there is a sense in which the film really was doing something radical for its time. This was a very difficult era for men. Men were falling behind in school, the workforce, and in life. Yet, at the same time, they were being made the poster child for everything bad going on in the world. This was the era of #MeToo, of school shooters, and larger conversations of “The Patriarchy” and “Toxic Masculinity”. Joker, in effect, said white men could be victimized by the system too, and have good reason to be tempted toward the darkness. It was Breaking Bad for an era of men for whom having a college degree and getting married themselves seemed totally out of reach. But the movie also validated popular liberal narratives, like how bad rich people can be, and the harms of cutting social services.

This combination made Joker a surprisingly apolitical hit, raking in over a billion dollars, and being adored by anti-woke film critics like Critical Drinker while still winning a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix. Anyone who experienced the growing anti-institutional and anti-elite distrust in America could see themselves in this movie, whether they were Bernie Bros or Trump supporters. 

That’s one reason it's so shocking this year’s sequel Joker Folie à Deux is so universally disliked–by critics and fans–and such a box office bomb. The film has a 33% critics score and a 32% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and the lowest Cinemascore of any comic book movie. It made less money its opening weekend than the Sony flop Morbius, and in it’s second weekend had the biggest box office drop of of all time for a comic book movie.

Fans and critics alike were so shocked by the film they went so far as to say the movie was an intentional middle finger to fans of the original by director Todd Phillips. As IGN complied:

“‘Joker: Folie à Deux’s’ Fatal Flaw Is Turning the Fans Into the Villains of the Sequel,” screams Variety. “Fans Say ‘Joker 2’ Ending Was a Betrayal, but Was It Actually Its Finest Moment?,” THR opined. Mashable called Joker: Folie à Deux “(a) middle finger to fans of Lady Gaga, the DC movies, and musicals.” And here’s Rolling Stone for the kicker: “‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Has a Message for Fans: Go F-ck Yourselves.” Likewise, audience backlash on social media and YouTube all echo the same refrain: Joker 2 hates Joker fans.

Phillips, for his part, denies this movie was targeting fans.

[I]t was never about addressing toxic fandom, but it was about addressing this idea of what happens if this thing gets put upon you … but it's not actually what you are. And then, what happens in the worst case scenario, if you finally find love in your life or you think you do, but that person is in love with the character that you represent, not the person that you are.

So is this movie targeting fans? And if so, does that make it a bad movie?

Joker: Folie à Deux picks up a few years after the original. Arthur Fleck is an inmate in Arkham Asylum, having killed six people in the first film. He’s keeping his head down while being bullied by the guards. He’s being coached by his lawyer before trial to claim that Joker is an alternate personality responsible for those deaths. Arthur is demoralized by this and the media's condemnation of him until he meets Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a fellow inmate and a huge fan of his. They start an affair and she convinces him to re-embrace the Joker persona his fans on the outside want him to be.

The film starts out subversive of the first Joker, but thematically consistent and compelling in its own right. Arthur is a loser in reality but powerful in his fantasies. While the first film portrayed Arthur’s journey to villainy as evil, it still showed that it made him–at least in part–powerful. He did kill those who mistreated him. He did gain the adoration of the crowd because of it.

But Joker: Folie à Deux shows that any “empowerment” Arthur felt was a fantasy. He’s under the power of everyone at Arkham, in the legal system, and in the media. Whenever he sees the world as it is, he feels small and stays quiet. When Harley convinces him to embrace his Joker persona, all the moments of power he experiences are surreal musical numbers that occur largely in his head or are undermined moments later. (The most horrifying is when the prison guards respond to his Joker rant in court by gang raping him when he comes to prison. A scene that is thankfully cut away from.)

Each embrace of his Joker identity involves more elaborate surreal scenarios, deviating ever further from the reality that Artur is rejecting. We can see that no matter what he does as the Joker, it won’t stop the legal system from pronouncing him guilty and giving him the death penalty. (In fact, acting like the Joker in court only makes that more likely.) There is no scenario where he and Harley ride off into the sunset. Embracing the fantasy is just digging his grave deeper when the bill eventually comes due.

This is a fascinating start to an anti-toxic masculinity fable. One feature of toxic masculinity–and toxic people in general–is the belief that goodness amounts to weakness. “Nice guys finish last”, “Jerks get the girl’, etc. The Nova documentary Mind of a Rampage Killer which profiles many people who went on killing rampages like Joker did in his first movie, found one of the most common explanations for killing was a desire not to be a victim. Be the sheep or be the wolf.

This is the pitch of someone like Andrew Tate, who’s become the poster boy for the worst in men by telling men that the way to be a man is to dominate and exploit women. Women want you to be a misogynist, he says. If you become a jerk, you’ll be respected by men and desired by women.

Now, there are good reasons people can fall into this line of thinking. We often see bad people succeed in life. We live in a fallen world. So sin will sometimes be rewarded. Some studies seem to support the link between bad behavior and success. A study published in The Atlantic showed that people see people who break rules on their behalf as leaders but do so on behalf of others or just themselves as jerks.  Studies further show that “Benevolent sexism” makes men more attractive to women. People often describe themselves as entering their “Villain Era” when they start setting boundaries with loved ones because they’re choosing themselves over sacrificing for others. CEOs are more likely to be psychopaths than the general population.

But most studies also show a strong correlation between positive traits and success–whether those are regarding a person’s capabilities or morals. Intelligence and the personality trait of conscientiousness (e.g., competence), are leading indicators of success in life. Moral traits are linked to better life outcomes as well. Being kind makes people more physically attractive, gives better health and well-being, and can often bring greater career success. And “bad boy” traits are linked to worse life outcomes. The reality is that antisocial and psychopathic people end up in jail more often than they end up as CEOs.

One of my biggest White Pills was realizing that many people I thought had succeeded because they were jerks really succeeded for other reasons. They succeeded because they were confident. Or talented. Or hard-working. And had good boundaries. Further, many times what I had been taught were traits that made me “good” were actually just traits that made me “nice”--and those were not the same thing. As Henry Cloud and John Townsend point out in their classic book Boundaries, setting boundaries isn’t selfish, but taking stewardship over what you actually have responsibility for: which includes yourself. This goes for some of the other studies I mentioned. The key to being seen as a leader is taking risks and sharing the benefits of those risks with others. What is called “benevolent sexism” actually just means (if you look at the definition) treating women like they’re special and worth protecting and providing for.

Dr. Jordan Peterson once said that one reason we know that the world isn’t structured to reward psychopathic behavior is that psychopaths are only around 3% of the population at any given time (some reports say 1% or 4%). And if being a psychopath was a good long-term strategy for success, survival of the fittest would mean that number would be a lot higher.

Our film industry right now is obsessed with teaching us that evil is the root of success, and that does real harm to people at the bottom. I wrote an article for Religion & Liberty about the problematic trend of “eat the rich” movies like Glass Onion, Blink Twice, The Menu, and Parasite. My objection to these movies is that they keep poor people poor by saying that wickedness and luck lead to success and that the poor can only succeed by copying the rich’s wickedness. In reality, discipline and building cross-economic relationships do a lot more to change one’s economic future.

This means that a movie that treats the “powerful psychopath myth” as a fantasy could be a positive story. It could help dispel the myth for people–young men in particular–that the dark path was worth going down. If Folie à Deux shows Arthur indulging his delusions all the way to tragedy, it would be a strong cautionary tale. Or if Arthur chooses to reject his Joker persona and live in reality–perhaps developing genuine positive relationships with people at Arkham–it could be a beautiful redemption story. Sure, fans of the original Joker who liked it because it reinforced the myth that evil gives power might object. But they are the ones who most need to hear that lesson.

But it does not do either of those things.

(Major spoilers to follow)

Sadly, the film’s ending completely undermines any potentially beautiful message. Arthur does choose to reject the Joker identity and confess his crimes as Arthur Fleck. But it’s then and only then that things fall apart for him. It’s then that Harley leaves him, that he loses his friends, and ends up being stabbed in the gut and dying in prison. He even gets broken out of his trial initially by his Joker fans before he runs away from them because he doesn’t want to be Joker. Meaning that if he’d just kept up with his Joker persona, he would have been broken out and gotten the girl. All the tragedy that happens after–losing the love of his life, going back to Arkham, being murdered–happens because he “gave up” as Harley said. Far from undermining toxic incel fantasies, the movie validates them. Be the bad guy. Don’t chicken out like Arthur Fleck did. Then you’ll get the hot groupie and the worshiping fans and stick it to the man.

This causes the film to fail artistically as well. If you spent the entire first two acts of the movie establishing aesthetically the toxic male narrative as fantasy and the alternative as reality, to undermine this in the narrative unravels any meaning to the words and images flashing across the screen.

It’s no wonder both fans and critics hated this sequel. Fans hate it because it didn’t give them the antihero they wanted. Critics hate it because it doesn’t give anything at all. There is no meaning to the suffering, just suffering.

It’s for this reason that I don’t blame people for suspecting that director Todd Phillips made the film just to punish fans for liking the first one. Honestly, I think this film will encourage toxic masculinity far more than the first one ever did. Because it takes away the fans' hero while still validating the fantasy. Moreover, it justifies further feelings of persecution: “Look how the woke media takes away white male heroes. That just proves how society is against me.”

So did Todd Phillips intentionally make this movie to punish fans? I don’t know. Perhaps. But if so, why did he undermine his own anti-toxic masculinity message? Why is the film so at odds with itself with what it wants to say?

I believe the film is at odds with itself because Todd Phillips is. You see, it’s not just low-status men who embrace the binary that bad guys win and nice guys lose. It’s pervasive in high-status societies too–particularly ones that prize feminism.

I wrote for Religion Unplugged that last year’s movies Barbie and Poor Things both affirmed what I call the “Doormat Ken” or “Dictator Ken” binary (or “Deplorable Ken”, as I put it then) binary. In those movies, the only times that men stand up to women, or tell them no, is when they are toxic men, or at least behaving toxic at the time. The only men who are portrayed as good are the ones who never stand up for themselves.

Todd Phillips indicated what he saw as an especially important scene in Joker: Folie à Deux: when Joker confronts his old friend Gary Puddles. In court, Joker tries to embarrass him. But he becomes moved by how much his previous actions hurt him

[I]t's showing you the real-world effects of trauma on a person who witnessed it, right? Even beyond just witnessing something horrible. What does that do to you, right? You know what I mean? It's two, three years later in the movie and Gary still says he can't sleep and he still wasn't able to go back to work. These effects of violence was something we really wanted to kind of — at least that scene addresses some part of it.

We see here that Todd Phillips’ critique of violence isn’t that it doesn’t give you power. It’s that it harms people. That harm disqualifies it from use. But rejecting violence doesn’t bring Artur Fleck redemption, only humiliation and death. Because embracing goodness here still brings with it weakness.

We also see this contempt for the nice but weak man earlier in Todd Phillips’ filmography. At the end of the first Hangover film, the loveable loser Stu is a nice guy but a pushover for his abusive wife. While he’s the nice guy, the movie has no trouble abusing him and humiliating him. He only is able to stand up to his wife by getting into a public shouting match with her and humiliating her in front of a wedding party. Did she shout first? Sure. Does it still fit the binary? Yes.

As much as director Todd Phillips may want to tell a story that dispels the psychopath fantasy of toxic masculinity, he can’t. He can’t because there’s a major part of him that believes it. He believes that evil gives you power. He just believes that the harm it causes means it's a power worth giving up. Even if it ends with a knife in your belly.

But that binary only exists in a world that doesn’t have Batman. That’s the kicker. Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix chose to present a Gotham where evil is strength and goodness is weakness. But they had to take Batman out to do it. Because Batman–and the superhero genre in general–are a full-throated rejection of that binary.

There’s an exchange I always remember in the film American Sniper, where Chris Kyle’s dad tells him that everyone has three choices: to be a sheep, a wolf… or a sheepdog who protects the sheep. And a sheepdog is always what a man is supposed to choose.

We don’t live in the world that Joker: Folie à Deux presents us. We live in a world of Batman and Sheepdogs. If there’s good news in the failure of the movie, it’s that maybe most people still recognize that.

Joseph Holmes is a film critic in New York City.