If You Think ‘Joker 2’ Was a Disaster, Wait Till You Hear About Its Development – Todd Phillips Wanted Nothing to Do With DC: “No one could get through to Todd”

‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ premiered globally last week, and to say that the movie had a disastrous release would be an understatement. For the first time in a long time, the fans and the critics agree – the movie is bad.

It currently has a 33% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes by critics and a 31% approval rate by audiences. The movie is also a notable box office flop going by the opening weekend. This is an entirely different mess considering that at a $200M budget, it cost three times as much as the original movie.

The movie has also seen massive audience walkouts, with some fans going as far as to demand a refund for the movie. It’s been described as incoherent mess, but judging by its development, now in retrospect we see that it never could be anything else than a mess.

So, let’s start with the analysis. As you’re probably aware the first ‘Joker’ was always meant to be a standalone movie, and Phillips refused to make a sequel until something bizarre happened.

Apparently, the idea for the movie came to Joaquin Phoenix in a dream, and he was the one who pushed for the sequel according to WB insiders who worked on the movie.

Todd Phillips was also given significant creative freedom and final cut authority for ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ with no test screenings to preserve potential spoilers, though the film’s plot isn’t particularly spoiler-heavy.

Unlike the first ‘Joker,’ where former DC Films president Walter Hamada was involved, no DC executives were part of this sequel’s greenlighting due to internal chaos at DC during that time. Phillips himself stated that James Gunn and the new DC Studios leadership had nothing to do with the movie, his exact (somewhat smug) quote was:

With all due respect to [Gunn and Safran], This is kind of a Warner Brothers movie, and that’s them also wanting it to be like, ‘Okay, Todd did his thing. Let Todd continue to do his thing.

Apparently, in the end, THR reports that Gunn gave Todd Phillips notes on the movie but Phillips decided to ignore them. He wanted nothing to do with DC and apparently kept the attitude until the movie’s release, one insider reports:

No one could get through to Todd. And the one thing about genre stuff: If you don’t listen and pay attention to what the fan expectations are, you’re going to fail.

One of the movie’s greatest “sins” is that it was in fact a musical. That musical aspect of the movie was downplayed during the whole marketing campaign both by Todd Phillips and by Lady Gaga.

They apparently figured out early that fans won’t react to this well. Phillips came to the defense of the movie, stating that the movie is not a musical, despite very clearly describing him as one. His exact statement was:

Most of the music in the movie is really just dialogue. It’s just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead.

Phillips also reportedly considered putting on a Broadway show before committing to making a movie. So if you think that this “musical” aspect of the movie was all a big misunderstanding you would be wrong. ‘Joker 2’ was the musical first and the Joker movie second.

For the original ‘Joker,’ the budget was capped at $55 million, with co-financiers like Bron and Village Roadshow to reduce financial risk. However, for the sequel, under David Zaslav’s leadership, only one co-financier, Domain, is involved in minimizing outgoing funds.

The movie reportedly cost around $200M to make with both Phoenix and Lady Gaga getting a handsome check out of it. Phoenix reported salary was around $20M while Lady Gaga has gotten $12M. The singer also signed up for the movie before the script was complete.

And now, the ending. We knew that Phillips never planned to make Arthur Fleck “The Clown Prince of Crime,” he stated as much ahead of the movie’s premiere.

No one however could have anticipated that the character would go through a humiliation ritual being used and abused in the worst possible ways before ultimately being killed by “the real Joker.”

The movie ends with a tacky cliche scene of the real Joker carving himself a “Glasgow Smile.” According to the reports, the original movie was supposed to end with Phoenix’s Joker carving a smile and Nolan blocked it. Now that Nolan left WB Phillips had a free reign to use that ending in a different (worse) way.

The movie domestically opened at $37.8M lower than ‘Morbius’ and ‘The Marvels’ and ultimately received a “D” cinema score, the lowest for any superhero movie. Although to be fair, ‘Joker 2’ is not a superhero movie, it’s not even an adaptation, the characters are so far removed from the source material that it feels like cheap fan fiction.

The last thing that leads us to believe that Phillips did this on purpose is the fact that the director was secluded on a ranch during the movie’s premiere. Likely anticipated the backlash against both him and the movie.

The fans already started attacking the director on social media, which is never justified. At the end of the day, it’s only a movie and a bad movie at that. The shame of having the biggest superhero flop in the last 20 years is enough.

What do you think about the whole situation? Let us know in the comments below!

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