2019’s Joker occupies a weird space in culture. When it was released in October of that year, everyone side-eyed it with a bit of scepticism – Did we really need to know The Joker’s backstory when part of what makes him so compelling is his ambiguous lunacy? and did we really need another take on the character from Joaquin Phoenix when Heath Ledger’s was so tragically defining in The Dark Knight?
Still, naysayers be damned, the film hit screens and everything exploded. It hit a billion comfortably at the box office, nabbed Phoenix a Best Actor Oscar and created possibly one of the most toxic discourse divides of the pre-COVID times (because the metric truly doesn’t exist now!). Depending on who you talked to, Joker was either a flawlessly twisted analysis of mental illness or a derivative, lazy mess. It was adopted by incel 4channers as a manifesto against ‘society, man’ at the same time that it was becoming your mum’s new favourite movie.
Although everything surrounding its release implied its position as a standalone character drama, its box office caché made a sequel inevitable. Still, by the time 2022 rolled around and we got confirmation, morale was low. We’d just crawled out of a world-altering pandemic and the thought of willingly throwing ourselves back to the dreary, nihilistic wolves felt like a less-than-appealing prospect (‘Haven’t we suffered enough!’). But then something miraculous happened: Lady Gaga.
There could be a hundred Harley Quinns in the room, and all you need is one Stefani Germanotta to turn the vibe around. After she was announced as the romantic foil in the Jukebox musical (!!), a shift was felt (read: your queer friends on Twitter decided to care about Joker 2 now). There’s something visceral that happens when Lady Gaga joins a film project – the mere fact that she takes the responsibility of acting So Seriously! and with Such Reverance! makes anything she’s in inherently a little bit camp, which is about as alien a concept for the first Joker as the concept of subtext. Would House of Gucci have been seen as anything other than a mid-tier historical biopic without Gaga inhabiting the living spirit of Patrizia Reggiani like a poltergeist? Probably not. She’s a very good actress (Oscar-nominated, if you forgot) and one of the most fascinating (and culture-dominating) figures in pop culture.
With the newly-released first trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux, we get a somewhat lighter touch to Joker. Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck may be haunting the grim hallways of Arkham Asylum like an emaciated ghoul and giving a classic maniacal cackle in the rain, but the introduction of Gaga’s Quinn softens some of the first film’s most crushing theme (and the one that really seemed to hit the more isolated corners of the internet like a runaway bullet train): loneliness. Somehow, these two crazy kids found each other! And against the sounds of Tom Jones belting “What the World Needs Now Is Love”, what seems like a relationship built in escapist delusion from the sanitarium hallways – with them dancing around the city in fancy houses and causing mayhem on the Wall Street steps – just looks, well, fun, and the first Joker wasn’t much fun at all.
Joker: Folie à Deux may still cash in on the first film’s cynicism and aimless anarchism, but with Gaga on board, it’ll be at least 50 per cent better. We will be seated in the theatre on 4 October. Join us.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
