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Joker sequel flops hard, sparking gender bias debate
Joker sequel flops hard, sparking gender bias debate
Fans call out the giant sexist elephant in the room after 'Joker 2' fails at the box office.
By all accounts, the somewhat anticipated sequel to Todd Phillips' Joker is a complete flop. And it's drawing renewed attention to the way studios and certain groups of fans look at box office failures when the story revolves around a man vs when it revolves around a woman.
It's understandable Warner Bros. decided to greenlight a sequel to the 2019 comic book film. It made $96.2 million in the U.S. on opening weekend, off a budget of just $65 million. But Folie à Deuxreportedly cost around $200 million — a massive leap in cost that made it one of the most expensive DC films to date. This weekend, it only recouped around $40 million domestically.
More than that, it's been largely panned across the board. It has a 33% positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and only a 31% audience score. Ratings on other sites aren't much better. It received a rare "D" CinemaScore — previously unheard of for a comic book movie.
It's also worth noting that Joker: Folie à Deux isn't dealing with the review bombing that's become so prominent when franchises dare to make a movie featuring women, BIPOC, or queer characters that Variety recently did a whole piece on how "toxic fandoms" are shifting the landscape of film. Rather, Phillips' film is bombing of its own accord.
But the response is miles away from what happens when something like Birds of Prey,,The Marvels, or The Acolyte doesn't break box office or streaming records. When that happens, the viability of female-led big budget projects is called into question. Or the blame gets shifted to individual women involved — Brie Larson gets blamed for not pandering to men, Amandla Stenberg must hate Star Wars fans because she suggested racism contributed to review bombing, Margot Robbie just doesn't "get" Harley Quinn.
Either way, future projects starring these characters get stalled or axed, their female directors don't get called back, and we're all left wondering if we're about to endure another 12 year drought before another female superhero gets her own movie.
Never mind that movies like Birds of Prey or The Marvels, considered "flops," received overwhelmingly more positive receptions from critics and fans alike than the Joker sequel. Folie à Deux will be considered an isolated mishap. More male-driven comic book movies will be made, Phillips' career will not be impacted, nor will star Joaquin Phoenix's, and because it's how things go every single time.
And it's being exacerbated by press and power players seemingly rallying around Phillips in his time of failure — a courtesy that, plenty of folks readily pointed out — is never extended in the same way to female directors.
Now, will we get a third Joker from Phillips? Who knows. Probably not, although quite frankly it doesn't seem out of the question, considering the types of nonsensical choices that keep being made over at Warner Bros. Discovery under David Zaslav. But it certainly seems more likely something like that would be greenlit over a follow-up to Cathy Yan and Christina Hodson's Birds of Prey, because there's only one demographic in Hollywood that gets repeated chances to fail.
