The joke is on the fans.

This article contains spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux.

When joker When it hit theaters in 2019, critics feared that the film's portrait of an alienated loner who becomes a folk hero by killing a talk show host on live television could lead to real-world violence – and in some ways Joker: Folie à Deux proves them right. Although Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck spent time in a mental asylum between films, his legend has only grown, aided by a TV movie based on his life and a cheesy true-crime book entitled The day the laughter died. His trial for the on-air murder of Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) and several others, including the Bernhard Goetz-style shooting of three men who had harassed him in a subway car, is a huge public spectacle, the courthouse is swarming with face-painting protesters, which Arthur approvingly sees as a harbinger of widespread chaos. At the end of jokerArthur enjoyed the world he had helped create, which was as turbulent as his own mind. But inside Slide for twohe begins to think about what he has set in motion, only to realize that he lacks the strength to put out the fire or even prevent himself from getting burned.

Opening with a fake Looney Tunes cartoon drawn by The Triplets of Bellevilleis Sylvain Chomet, in which Arthur's Joker is strangled by his own shadow, Slide for two is organized around the idea of ​​the split self, which also becomes the backbone of his criminal defense strategy. Is the Joker just an outlet for Arthur's long-suppressed anger, or is he a separate personality so different from Arthur that she classifies him as legally insane? Or is there a third possibility, favored by Arthur's legions of fans: that the Joker is his true self, the embodiment of what we could all become if we threw off the yoke of society and let our freak flag fly.

That's the view favored by Harley Quinzel (Lady Gaga), who is so obsessed with Arthur that she checks herself into Arkham Asylum simply because she has no chance of meeting him. Lee, as she is called – to better deter the tiny percentage of viewers who are familiar with Batman villain Harley Quinn but don't know that Gaga plays her – can only admit herself into the minimum security wing of Arkham, where There is little chance of running into a notorious multiple murderer. But as luck would have it, Arthur has become a favorite of the Arkham guards, and one of them thinks it would be amusing to secure him a spot in the minimum security wing's music class. And music, the teacher tells the class, is what we use to “make us whole.”

The music inside Slide for two does a lot more. From the moment Lee warbles the first notes of “Get Happy” in her breathless, trembling voice, the film gradually evolves into a full-fledged musical, although director and co-writer Todd Phillips avoided using the term , because, as he explained earlier this week, “I don't know if you leave this movie feeling any better than when you came in.” The opening cartoon features the hallway outside the dressing room where Arthur transforms into the Joker Posters lined with classics from the golden age of Hollywood musicals Shall we dance? And The band wagonThe latter forms the background for the scene in which Harley demonstrates her love for Arthur by setting fire to a piano in the lounge. But Phillips has no coherent idea of ​​how to use the songs, let alone where to source them. Some are musical theater standards, some pop hits from the songbooks of Frank Sinatra and the Bee Gees, some cabaret deep cuts by Anthony Newley and Jacques Brel. It's like a jukebox musical put together by randomly pressing buttons.

Extend the first one jokerIn Phillips' edgelord antics, Phillips provokes the audience with crude juxtapositions, such as when Lee breaks off an imaginary duet of “To Love Somebody” to shoot Arthur in the stomach. But he often works against the songs rather than getting something out of them, like Martin Scorsese does After hours turned Peggy Lee's melancholic “Is That All There Is?” into a nightmarish lament. First joker generously stolen from Scorsese The King of Comedy And Taxi driver, Slide for two dips his greasy hands into the filmmaker's New York, New Yorkbut Phillips doesn't have the deep understanding of the genre required to either modernize or subvert it, so he just scribbles around the edges, configuring Arthur's failed stand-up comedian into a thwarted song-and-dance man around.

Arthur's televised trial is the perfect opportunity for him to steal the spotlight, and he does it with gusto, firing his lawyer (Catherine Keener) so he can have more camera time as his own defense attorney. (Apparently he also squeezed in a few courtroom dramas between these movie musicals, enough to occasionally adopt a slimy Southern accent.) But the fame he has achieved is not the kind he hoped for. Even on stage, he's still Arthur Fleck and not the Joker his fans want and need him to be. When Arthur and Lee first met, she bonded with him because of their shared upbringing – she, like him, came from a broken and abusive home, in the same impoverished area where he grew up. But this turns out to be just a pretext: Harley's parents are not only alive but also wealthy, and she is just a privileged child playing a role and desperately wanting to be someone other than who she is. She needs Arthur's other self to be real so that hers can be real too: the Joker and Harley, not Arthur and Lee. When Arthur announces to the cameras that there is no Joker – that there was always and only him – she immediately loses interest and drops him in the middle of the now-iconic staircase from the first film.

In Slide for twoAs in the real world, the Joker Stairs have become a landmark, a place of pilgrimage for people who find Arthur's rampage to be, if not admirable, at least a little badass. (The in-universe TV movie acts as a stand-in for this joker itself, a distorted version of the truth that turns a pitiful man into a tragic hero.) The new film is designed partly as a corrective to the first, but rather than take responsibility, Phillips shifts the blame onto his audience. It's not a mea culpa. It's a tua culpa.

During his time in Arkham, Arthur is tailed by a young inmate named Ricky Meline (Jacob Lofland), who is so in love with his famous wingmate that he asks Arthur to give him his first kiss. But it's not Arthur that Ricky idolizes; It's the Joker, and when Arthur rejects his chaos-causing alter ego, Ricky reacts in kind. In the final scene of the film, Arthur is called to Arkham's visiting room, but before he can see who is calling him, Ricky catches him in the hallway and asks him to tell him a joke. A psychopath walks into a bar, he begins, and sees a sad old clown drowning his sorrows. The psychopath offers to buy him a drink, and the clown says the psychopath can get him whatever he thinks is best. So the psychopath chooses the clown and, as Ricky concludes, “gets exactly what he deserves.” And with that, Ricky takes out a blade and stabs Arthur in the stomach, leaving him bleeding out on the floor. The camera stays focused on Arthur, but in the background we blurry as Ricky starts to giggle, turns the blade on himself, and cuts his own face. And we realize that we are witnessing the birth of another Joker – the one played by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.

The first joker seemed to exist in its own discrete universe, separate not only from that occupied by the mainline DC Comics films, but also from that created by 2022 The Batman also – a world of its own without Affleckless, Pattinsonless. This partly explained why Arthur's Joker was so different from previous versions of the character, but it also raised the question of why, aside from the appeal of internationally recognizable IP, it was a Joker movie at all. How did this scrawny, mumbling man turn into a giggling criminal mastermind? Slide for two gives a simple answer: He didn't do it. He merely inspired the man who wanted it. (The film also gives us our first look at Batman's future nemesis Two-Face, as Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent, played by industry(Harry Lawtey being blown up by a car bomb planted by Arthur's disciples.) It's a perfect ending in its own way, not only because it neatly ties up the loose ends of the first film, but also because of how cowardly it feels submits to the demands that the film rejected. Phillips throws jokerHis fans are considered drooling idiots, but he also makes sure to serve them a plateful of their favorite sludge by accommodating Easter egg hunters while simultaneously suggesting they give themselves a life. That is Entertainment.