Second Thoughts About the Second Joker Film?

The original Joker back in 2019 was an exceedingly idiosyncratic film in many ways--an origin story not for a superhero but for a supervillain, which took a low-budgeted, action-sparse, period-set, Scorsese homage approach to telling the story of the "making of" the iconic figure at its center. However, on the basis of the character's intrinsic fascination (how many characters of any type, let alone comic book characters, have brought two different performers an Oscar?), and the controversy which surrounded the film, which substantially had to do with the film's element of social criticism, which had mainstream commentators calling for its censorship.

Of course, many a critic has treated that controversy as having been contrived--but it seems to me that this has tended to be an expression of hostility toward the kind of criticism it had to make, outside the range of subjects they approve (a movie like Jay Roach's Bombshell much more to their liking).

There are thus grounds for considerable skepticism about whether the broader public shares their view. Still, the kind of anticipation the promotion of the first film managed to generate is not easily recreated, all as the sequel arrives in rather a different world, box office-wise and maybe even pop culturally than the original did. If the idea of following up Taxi Driver with New York, New York, so to speak, seems risky, we have seen risk and oddity pay off as seemingly safe blockbusters flopped hard--all as it is easy to picture a year in which Deadpool (who appeared on screen as a villain in someone else's movie first) saved the summer box office seeing the Joker save the box office this fall.