Joker was met with mixed reviews among critics and pretty positive reviews among everyone else. It doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks of the movie because it made a ton of money, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time in the process, and now Warner Bros and director Todd Phillips are talking about sequels. Thing is- we do not need one.
We personally really enjoyed Joker, and we gave it a positive review when it came out. And Joaquin Phoenix was fantastic as the titular character. But just because a movie is good, doesn’t mean we need more of it. Unfortunately, that isn’t how Hollywood, or any business for that matter, works.
What made Joker so appealing was that it was a story that had never been told before. Sure, there was the animated film The Killing Joke, but don’t forget that it was a graphic novel first, and Joker isn’t really even based on that at all. Joker is a movie that we didn’t know we needed (maybe we didn’t need it, but we are glad we got it). And now that we got it, we don’t need to venture off into the further understanding Joker’s rise from mentally unstable loser, to supervillain. We get where it goes from here. We don’t need that movie. But, alas, Hollywood is pushing it so it may happen…
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times about the possibility of a sequel, director Todd Phillips had this to say:
“But it couldn’t just be this wild and crazy movie about the ‘Clown Prince of Crime. It would have to have some thematic resonance in a similar way that this does. Because I think that’s ultimately why the movie connected, it’s what’s going on underneath. So many movies are about the spark, and this is about the powder. If you could capture that again in a real way, that would be interesting.”
This is the point I am trying to make. Any movie that takes place after this will either be boring, because it will just try and copy what Joker (2019) did, or it will go into the Clown Prince of Crime, which is entirely unnecessary. Or, it will be a story about a Joker of one universe doing his thing, while we have another Joker in the DCEU. It’s all just bad timing and we can’t have two Jokers running around in their own film franchises just like we can’t have two Batmen running around in two different film franchises either.
Look, can’t we just leave well enough alone? Can’t we just accept that Joker pleased fans and the critics who didn’t like it just didn’t get it? Just to touch base on that, pretty much all the reviews that were negative from industry critics just said the film was too dark/violent or completely missed the point of the movie entirely.
Leave Joker alone. We don’t need a pointless sequel that couldn’t possibly expand on the story and bring the audience to a place they have never been. We get it. We have seen it before. It’s been covered. Leave it alone. Leave. It. Alone.
