Joker 2, which flopped spectacularly this year compared to its predecessor, has been branded ‘the worst film ever made’ by one of its actors.
The musical sequel, formally titled Joker: Folie à Deux, debuted to mixed reviews at Venice Film Festival, with reaction gradually worsening as its wide release date drew closer – although it was not universally hated.
Financially speaking though, its box office has massively paled in comparison to that of the first Joker, which grossed over $1billion upon its release in 2019, while this has just made it to £204m so far, a shortfall of $800m.
American comic Tim Dillon, who had a small role as one of the Arkham Asylum security guards in the beleaguered sequel, was comfortable publicly ripping into it as a ‘terrible’ movie that’s ‘not even hate-watchable’ for entertainment value.
Dillon even introduced Joker 2 as ‘the worst film ever made’ during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast recently.
He showed he had no time for any defence of the film, written and directed by Todd Phillips, which he ruled had ‘no plot’.
The comedian also claimed that he and other actors working with him slammed the movie while they were still working on it as ‘c**p’ and predicted it would ‘bomb’.
‘We would sit there, me and these other guys all dressed in these security outfits because we’re working at the Arkham Asylum, and I would turn to one of them and we’d hear this c**p and I’d go, “What the f**k is this?” And they’d go, “This is going to bomb, man.” I go, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
‘We were talking about it at lunch, and we’d go, “What is the plot? Is there a plot? I don’t know, I think he falls in love with her in the prison?”,’ he recalled.
Host Rogan suggested it could be a movie that people might still enjoy watching specifically because of its poor reputation, in an ironic fashion, before achieving cult status like Paul Verhoeven’s erotic drama Showgirls, released in 1995.
But Dillon shut that down, insisting: ‘It’s not even hate-watchable. That’s how terrible it is.’
He did, however, agree with the theory that Joker 2 was made to challenge the very fans who loved the first film, released five years ago.
‘After the first Joker, there was a lot of talk like, “Oh, this was loved by incels. This was loved by the wrong kinds of people and this sent the wrong kind of (message). Male rage! Nihilism! All these think pieces.” And then I think, “What if we went the other way,” and now they have Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga tap dancing to a point where it’s insane,’ he added.
Dillon also condemned it as the ‘most immoral thing I’ve ever seen in my life’ and ‘a waste of everyone’s time’ if it was made as a protest against its original fans and also because filmmaker Phillips might not wanted to come back for a sequel.
This is a theory that director Quentin Tarantino recently put forward too, where he claimed ‘the Joker directed the movie’ in the movie’s reported eye-watering budget spend and that Phillips was actually saying ‘f**k you to all of them’ – Hollywood, fans and stockholders alike.
The 39-year-old also criticised the ‘hubris’ behind that approach, bemoaning ‘the idea that you could – that people love it so much they’re going to accept any version of it.
The original Joker grossed over $1billion despite a budget of just $55m, resulting in Warner Bros greenlighting a production budget for number two that was reported at around $190m – and that’s before any marketing costs, which would be tens of millions more, are taken into consideration.
Joker 2 made just $40m (£30.6m) at the US box office initially, massively down on predictions of $70m (£53.5m) from just weeks prior, and $81.1m (£62m) internationally.
While that initially meant a loss of $70m against the production budget, the sequel scraped a little more in, finishing at $204m worldwide – which still means it hasn’t clawed back all its costs, and is also just 20% of what the first film made.
Joker: Folie à Deux settled at a grim 32% score on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes from both critics’ professional takes and verified fan reactions alike and has already been released onto streaming.
It was made available there for UK viewers on November 4, just one month after its cinematic release, and even earlier – on October 29 – in the US.
Joker: Folie à Deux is available to stream across PVOD platforms including Sky Store, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Apple TV now before releasing on Blu-ray and DVD on December 16.
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