Joaquin Phoenix
Arthur Fleck
Overview
While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur Fleck not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
2 min readThe Punchline Nobody Wanted
I still can't decide whether Todd Phillips actively dislikes the audience that made the first Joker a phenomenon. Five years after the original turned Arthur Fleck into a billion-dollar cultural flashpoint and, somehow, a grim mascot for the alienated, Joker: Folie à Deux comes back only to tear that image apart. latestnetflix.com's take is that this sequel is a courtroom drama inside a prison movie, with jukebox musical fantasies breaking through at odd intervals.
Whether that collision feels daring or just deeply irritating depends on how much patience you have for a director who seems determined to deny every obvious crowd-pleasing impulse. I admire the nerve, even if I spent a lot of it glancing at the clock.
Arthur is deep in Arkham now, and Joaquin Phoenix plays him less like a supervillain than a sedated, depleted man waiting to die. The physical transformation is still extreme—the jutting bones, the awkward shuffle, the body that always seems to be folding in on itself—but whatever accidental mythic force surrounded him in 2019 is gone. Then Lee Quinzel arrives.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.0/10
"A daring but divisive musical sequel whose strong lead work and striking visuals cannot overcome a thin, meandering story and a format many find ill‑suited to Joker."
Performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga attract praise, with their unsettling chemistry and a polished, atmospheric visual style standing out even for detractors. The overall reaction is largely negative, centering on frustration with the jukebox musical approach, a weak narrative that feels like an unnecessary epilogue to the first film, and character choices that seem to undercut the original's impact. Scores cluster in the low-to-mid range, reflecting respect for craft but disappointment with tone, latestnetflix.com contends, structure, and storytelling.
What viewers praise
- Intense lead performances Joaquin Phoenix is seen as fully committed and unsettling again, while Lady Gaga is frequently called a pleasant surprise who brings energy and emotional bite to Harley.
- Charged lead chemistry The relationship between Arthur and Harley is often described as compelling to watch, giving the film some emotional pull even when the script is criticized.
- Impressive visual craft The film’s cinematography, staging, and overall production design are praised as beautiful, eerie, and technically accomplished.
Common complaints
- Misjudged musical concept Turning the sequel into a jukebox-style musical is widely viewed as jarring, with songs that interrupt momentum and feel mismatched with the grim crime-thriller world of the first movie.
- Weak and shallow story The plot is often called paper-thin, repetitive, and more like a series of delusional vignettes or an overlong epilogue than a new chapter with real insight.
- Undercutting the original Character decisions and the way events are reframed give a sense that the film diminishes or even reverses what made the 2019 story powerful.
- Overlong and exhausting The runtime feels bloated, with courtroom framing and musical interludes stretching the film into something many describe as boring or a slog despite the spectacle.
- Overfocus on Harley Some viewers feel the narrative bends around showcasing Harley and her numbers at the expense of Arthur’s arc and coherent world-building.
Recommended for
Joaquin Phoenix admirers Lady Gaga devotees Dark psychological musical fans Stylized legal drama enthusiasts Comic-book curiosity seekers
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsJOKER 2 MELTDOWN: BOMBS, BATHROOM SCANDALS & GAGA’S VANISHED KISS
Joker: Folie à Deux didn’t just divide audiences — it detonated an entire circus of behind-the-scenes drama, latestnetflix.com contends, power plays, and fan meltdowns. From extras afraid to pee to a director allegedly giving DC the middle finger, this sequel’s off‑screen story might be wilder than Arthur Fleck’s fantasies.
On-Set Drama & “We Knew It Would Bomb” Energy
- Comedian Tim Dillon, who played an Arkham guard, went full scorched-earth and claimed people on the set already knew Joker 2 was going to tank. He said cast members and bit players were literally sitting around asking what the hell the story even was, because the movie “seemed to have no plot” and they “couldn’t figure out the plot on set”
. - Dillon alleged the vibe was that it was “always going to be a flop,” and that this wasn’t hindsight — this was the mood while they were still shooting .
- Box office receipts kind of backed up the doom: the sequel reportedly crawled to just over $200 million worldwide, a face-plant compared to the first film’s billion‑plus haul
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Power Struggles: Todd Phillips vs. DC (And Everyone Else)
- Behind the camera, the real clown war was between Todd Phillips and DC Studios. Variety reports Phillips “wanted nothing to do with DC” during production and basically ghosted DC bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran, choosing to deal only with Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy .
- Phillips refused to test-screen the $200 million musical sequel — no studio notes, no advance audience reaction, just straight to Venice Film Festival, where it promptly got slapped with a Rotten Tomatoes score in the low 30s and a D CinemaScore .
- At the premiere, Gunn and Safran were glaringly absent, which insiders read as a sign of a seriously “dysfunctional dynamic” between the Joker silo and the new DC regime .
- Fans also noticed that the opening title sequence didn’t feature the DC Studios logo, which insiders described as Phillips effectively flipping DC the bird; a DC logo only appears later, at the end of the film .
- Bradley Cooper, who produced the first Joker, was totally out of the picture this time after his producing partnership with Phillips dissolved in 2021 — one source bluntly said, “No one could get through to Todd.”
Scandals & Controversies: The Bathroom-Gate Shoot
- Before the movie even came out, it had its first mini‑scandal: extras complained to TMZ that they weren’t being allowed regular bathroom or water breaks while filming a big subway sequence in Los Angeles .
- Background actors claimed they were made to work over two hours straight without being allowed to pee or drink water, and some said they were “terrified” to even ask, afraid they’d be labeled troublemakers and sent home .
- The backlash got loud enough that production reportedly changed course and loosened bathroom access after the complaints went public . When your movie’s first headline includes the phrase “pee and poo”… not ideal branding.
Gaga, Cut Kisses & Vanishing Screen Time
- Lady Gaga fans didn’t just walk out of the movie — they walked straight into conspiracy mode. BuzzFeed revealed that Todd Phillips cut a scene where Gaga’s Lee Quinzel kisses another woman while entering the courthouse for Arthur’s trial . That moment was improvised on set… and then axed in the final cut .
- Social media sleuths counted multiple Gaga moments from trailers and B‑roll that never made it into the film, feeding “Where is all the Gaga?” threads and director’s‑cut fantasies among stans .
- Behind the scenes, Gaga was far from just a hired voice: she and Joaquin Phoenix would reportedly meet in his trailer and tear up scripts together, rewriting scenes on the fly until they felt right .
- Gaga even wrote the film’s waltz scene herself and had to learn how to sing badly because Phoenix asked her to “sing poorly” so their live vocals would match Arthur’s messy mental state .
Gaga & Phoenix: Awkward Tension or Chaotic Besties?
- Fans scrolled frame‑by‑frame through promo interviews, convinced there was “tension” between Gaga and Phoenix. A Cosmopolitan piece flagged lip‑reading clips where viewers thought Phoenix looked annoyed when Gaga didn’t stand for applause during a screening — though this remains pure fan speculation .
- On the flip side, we got some extremely chaotic best‑friend energy:
- Phoenix recalled that when he first sang for Joker: Folie à Deux, Gaga “spit out her coffee” at how unexpected his voice was .
- He also asked her to deliberately sing worse, and she went along with it — hardly the move of a diva at war with her co‑star .
- A viral promo moment showed Phoenix accidentally grabbing Gaga’s water during an interview, making her literally spit-take with laughter .
- So while the internet loves a feud, the receipts we do have look more like oddball creative partnership than secret beef.
Wild Theories & “Did He Do It On Purpose?”
- After the flop, the fandom went full conspiracy board with a now‑infamous theory: Todd Phillips made Joker 2 bad on purpose.
- The Independent reported that viewers cooked up “wild theories” that the film was intentionally bad to annoy or troll fans of the original Joker, especially those who idolized Arthur as a misunderstood antihero .
- Some Reddit users labeled it “supreme incel ragebait”, arguing the movie was purposely designed to dismantle the fantasy of the first film .
- One viral comment declared: “This is exactly what Todd & the cast wanted. An outrage over the movie, because it completely destroys the fantasy that the first movie creates.”
- Whether you buy it or not, the idea that Joker 2 is a $200 million prank on its own fanbase might be the most Joker‑coded twist of all.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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