Paul Schrader’s Joker 2 Review Is Absolutely Brutal

To everyone reading this who is currently trying to make it big in the filmmaking industry and also has a Letterboxd or Twitter account (with all due respect to serial plagiarist Elon Musk, I ain’t calling it X), there’s one piece of advice that looms larger than any other: Keep those critical opinions on movies and shows to yourself. Fair or not, this is a business built on egos. Whether you’re trying to break through as a director, screenwriter, or even an actor, much of the day-to-day grind involves managing those very same egos. And when Hollywood oftentimes looks for reasons not to give you the green light, that task becomes inordinately more complicated when you find yourself in the same room as the studio executive who championed a divisive blockbuster– the same one that you gleefully tore to pieces on social media a few months back.

Then again, for some, rules are made to be broken. For others, those rules simply don’t apply. Longtime filmmaker Paul Schrader exists in the intersection between both of those realities, and he’s long past the phase of caring what anyone — even the biggest A-list names in town — might think about his latest series of unfiltered thoughts. The brilliant artist behind the screenplay of classics such as “Taxi Driver” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” has more than earned the right to tell it like it is, and he’s certainly done that with all his various Facebook posts over the years. (There’s even a popular Twitter account dedicated to signal boosting all his most random and controversial hot takes.)

Years after “Joker” director Todd Phillips so clearly took its cues from Martin Scorsese movies like “The King of Comedy” and, most relevantly, “Taxi Driver,” the acclaimed filmmaker has finally set his sights on the sequel “Joker: Folie À Deux” … and he’s not holding back whatsoever.

Poor Todd Phillips. As if it weren’t bad enough that critics had very few positive things to say about “Joker: Folie À Deux,” while audiences outright rejected the movie (to the tune of one of the all-time worst second weekend drops in box office history), now his fellow filmmakers in the industry are adding insult to injury and weighing in on the flop in the making. Worst of all, it just so happens to be the writer responsible for the aesthetic, tone, and narrative that Phillips tried so hard to homage the first time around. Remember when Martin Scorsese himself delivered one of the most brutal takedowns of a movie so inspired by his own work? When asked if he’d seen the 2019 “Joker” yet, he responded, “I saw clips of it. I know it. So it’s like, why do I need to? I get it. It’s fine.” Well, that’s nothing compared to what Paul Schrader had to say about the sequel.

In a recent interview with the aptly-named Interview Magazine, promoting Schrader’s latest film “Oh, Canada,” he brought up “Joker 2” completely unprompted. When asked what he thought about it, well, I’ll just let the visionary and ever-eloquent filmmaker take it from here:

“I saw about 10 or 15 minutes of it. I left, bought something, came back, saw another 10 minutes. That was enough.”

Ooooof. Specifically calling it out as “a really bad musical,” Schrader pretty much delivered the coup de grâce on what’s shaping up to be one of the biggest blockbuster misfires of the year. He didn’t just stop there, however. He had even more thoughts on what went so wrong with “Folie À Deux.”

For at least one brief moment in time, Paul Schrader spoke for most of us when it comes to what went so wrong with “Joker: Folie À Deux.” Of all the most prevalent issues moviegoers took with the sequel, the filmmaker pinpointed his most pressing concerns … and they have to do with the two stars of the show. Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga were considered to be the two biggest draws for the movie, but don’t even try telling Schrader that. In the same interview, he went on to explain why he didn’t exactly connect with either performer or, more importantly, the characters of Arthur Fleck and Lee Quinzel: 

“I don’t like either of those people. I don’t like them as actors. I don’t like them as characters. I don’t like the whole thing. I mean, those are people who, if they came to your house, you’d slip out the back door.”

Once again, tell us how you really feel, Paul Schrader! While he perhaps goes a bit too far in taking shots at their acting abilities — maybe it’s best if we never hear his opinions on movies like the 2018 “A Star Is Born” remake — I’m not sure anyone can really argue with his point about the two villains we’re stuck with throughout “Joker 2.” Both movies might be about the need to separate the Joker persona from the obviously damaged mind beneath the clown makeup … but if the script never makes us care about the man himself in the first place, then what’s the point? The same could certainly apply to Lee Quinzel in the sequel, who simply never has enough time to shine with everything else going on.

Is Schrader going full “Old man shaking fist at clouds,” or does he have a point? Either way, you can still catch “Joker: Folie À Deux” in theaters right now.