Joker 2 is exactly what comic book nerds wanted – now they'll regret it

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THere, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped, there are two great tragedies in life: the one of not getting what you want – and the other of getting it. It's an aphorism that comic book fans will feel keenly this weekend Joker: Folie à Deux is coming to cinemas. The film – a 2019 sequel jokerDC Comics' dark adaptation, which reimagined Batman's clown nemesis as a violent, frustrated instigator in the vein of Travis Bickle, feels like a deliberate attempt to grow up the superhero genre. This is exactly what many comic book fans have been wanting: a superhero movie that needs to be taken seriously, a dark, grounded story that just happens to be set in a world of caped vigilantes. Well, now they have it.

Over the past decade and a half, superhero adaptations have been the dominant force in popular cinema. But for all the money they make, for all the cultural oxygen they breathe, there is always one caveat: the refusal of some critical circles to consider them essential works of art. Martin Scorsese's comparison of Marvel films to “theme parks” is a comparison that has stuck like tar. Likewise the ubiquitous analogy of the “fast food of the cinema”. But it is an inferiority complex that is only partially justified. Yes, the genre still has its critics. But even before Joaquin Phoenix's appearance joker Despite winning Best Actor at the Oscars, superhero films were hardly excluded from the corridors of prestige: as early as 1979 Superman won an Oscar (for visual effects), while The Dark Knightstarring Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning villain, showed that critics were quite willing to recognize the artistic merits of a major comic book blockbuster. Still, fans called for pushing the boat further and making ever more self-aware films, a goal completely impervious to accusations of frivolity. Slide for two is this object. It's believable, understated… and utterly boring.

In light of the new film, the original joker Now it appears to be a dry run – a comic book film that was aesthetically sober and mature, but ultimately capitulated to the kind of pretentious, superficial bombast that fans might expect. In the third act joker saw its protagonist, mentally ill party clown Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), shoot a talk show host on live television, murder several other people and cause a riot. The sequel takes back this bombast, tears it apart, condemns it. It's a film that pathetically defies its own premise, a film about a supervillain who rejects the call to be a supervillain.

The majority of them Slide for two concerns Joker's imprisonment and murder trial. We get scenes in the prison yard. Scenes from conversations with his lawyer. Endless micro-insights into Fleck's psyche. The film is, incongruously, a jukebox musical, but the songs, old show tunes, offer little escape. Aside from a brief (and surprisingly funny) sequence of judicial showmanship, Slide for two is punitively suppressed, an exercise in conscious denial. Pop superstar Lady Gaga plays the wildly popular character Harley Quinn, Joker's chaotic lover (in this film with the slightly less imaginative name Lee Quinzel) – but even she is ultimately unable to coax Fleck into becoming a supervillain. Towards the end of the film, Fleck is taken out of the courtroom and Slide for two For a moment he seems to capitulate to his genre and moves closer to a spectacular action sequence – but no. Nobody arrives. That's what director Todd Phillips seems to be saying realistic Superhero fiction it really is.

Slide for two is Michael Corleone in Godfather Part IIIStringer Bell in the third season of The wire – an inveterate criminal who seeks the acceptance of heterosexual society. But like these men, approval is difficult to come by. By most conventional standards, the original joker was an unequivocal success and, in addition to winning the Oscar, broke the then-record for the highest-grossing R-rated film (grossing over $1 billion). Slide for twowith even more creative freedom and a larger budget (reportedly close to $200 million – on the same scale as big, effects-oriented blockbusters such as Avengers gather) was supposed to be a triumphant encore. But if predictions and early reactions are anything to go by, the general public won't know about it. Of course, a flood of negative reviews didn't help The Independent described it as “formally daring”). But this is a film clearly designed to displease, and the audience can smell it in the air, like a gas leak.

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The irony is that you really get involved in the experiment serious As a Joker movie, Phillips proved exactly why there's no need for it. Arthur Fleck might be more psychologically realistic than Ledger's electrifying interpretation of the character in The Dark Knightbut it's nowhere near as entertaining to look at – or as artistic. Perverse, Slide for two succumbs to the same prejudices that comic book fans so loathe – the idea that a film has to be “artsy” and “mature” to be taken seriously. By distorting the genre into something resembling “actual art,” Slide for two sacrificed the very things that made superhero movies worthwhile in the first place. Who's laughing now? Absolutely nobody.