The Mary Sue: This weekend, Joker: Folie à Deux opened in the American box offices with an incredibly lackluster $37.7 million. To put that in perspective, the infamously awful Morbius made $39 million during its opening weekend in 2022. Joker 2‘s box office bomb is even more distinct because it cost Warner Bros. $200 million to make.
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The implications of the Joker sequel’s failure are really interesting. Especially considering the massive success of the first movie, you would think that the extent to which Joker: Folie A Deux has bombed at the box office (its opening weekend only pulled in 37 million dollars) AND with critics (it’s currently at 33% at rotten tomatoes) would be getting more publicity. Warner Bros were so confident in its success that they didn’t even hold test screenings to gauge audience reactions. But still, although this failure is unexpected, lead Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips have not been panned to the same extent as other superhero movies. When you think of other superhero flops that HAVE received scathing reviews and public shaming (The Marvels, Madame Web, etc.) it is interesting to see how disproportionately female-led they are. Despite Joker 2, Phoenix and Phillips will likely be able to continue their careers with little issue. However, for Dakota Johnson and S.J. Clarkson of Madame Web, journalists and critics have continued to condemn them for the failure of the movie despite the fact that its been months since its release.
While reading this article, I realized that this was the first time I was hearing about Joker 2 flopping. I somewhat follow Marvel and DC movies, but I hadn’t even realized it had been released. It flopped, and very little was said about it. The contrast of that lack of publicity, especially given the amount of money that Warner Bros. spent on it ($200 million), to the amount that is said about some movies – especially female-led ones – that flop and how much the people involved are criticized is stark to say the least. The fact that the reaction to many female-led flops is to publicly shame the creative team and the reaction to other flops is to brush them away makes me wonder why society seems to be more okay with cruelly criticizing some people and not others? Why is the “shake it off and keep going” mentality not extended to all?
This is a super prevalent issue in our world today and one that should be pointed out more in huge industries such as media and film. I had not heard much about how Joker 2 was received and I guess that should have told me to not expect much at all once I looked into it. Still, I was shocked to see how badly it was received on opening weekend, despite the first movie doing incredibly well with audience and critics. Reading about the disparity between gender both in acting and directing is tiring to hear that it still exists so obviously. However, I have little surprise knowing the history of the film idustrry and the difference between men and women. I am glad that this movie’s release and subsequent flop is stirring up this kind of discourse around gender and movie fails. The first step towards improvement is having the issue forced in front of you and shown that a change needs to be made. Hopefully, with more female led movies, activist work, and time, the industry can move towards a fair system.
I think it's a form of discrimination when a creator's gender is brought up intentionally in the evaluation of their work. For example, in the article, the box office performance of Joker wasn't as good as expected, but the response to that didn't seem overly critical. On the other hand, female-led films like The Marvels tend to face much harsher criticism if they don't do well, often leading to debates about the viability of female-led films in general. But why is gender always a focal point when it comes to films led by women? We rarely see this kind of conversation for all-male films. A recent example is the Suffs musical, which closed early, and once again the focus was on women writers instead of the actual work. This double standard creates a damaging narrative in the industry, where male-dominated films are seen as the default and get more leniency, while female-led projects are constantly under scrutiny.
This double standard is so upsetting that its become really funny to me. The fact of the matter is, women and female presenting people in the entertainment industry have to fight three times as hard, and have an order of magnitude more talent and historical success, to get the courtesy that men are just given. With anything, with making mistakes early in their careers, with flop projects, with poor interviews, women are more criticized for everything. This discrepancy also falls along racial lines. Renee Rapp and Rachel Zegler have, in essence, the same track record with interviews. They both say the same, or equivalent, crazy stuff. And yet Rapp is joked about on the internet as being 'not media trained', has Tiktok edits made about her, and has actually gained popularity from her interview style, while Ziegler has been dragged across the dirt, been taken out of jobs, cancelled, and just overall publicly shamed. They are behaving the same way, but one of them is white. Not to mention that if a man said any of the things they say, he would be praised as being 'down to earth' and 'real'. I can't even think of a male example because they just aren't scrutinized like that. The double standard in entertainment is very real.
It’s really hard to picture the amount of money in the film industry, especially with a company as big as Warner Bros. 200 million dollars towards one movie is a crazy amount of money, but is quite common, especially when expecting to earn that money back and more. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case for Joker 2. From a consumer perspective, I hadn’t heard much about the movie. You would think that something costing 200 million would have better advertising. Unfortunately, with this massive failure of their opening weekend, Joaquin Phoenix and Todd Philips will be fine, unlike other female-led action movies that came out this year such as Madame Web and The Marvels, which are still getting slammed by critics. I hope, as the industry progresses, that these issues get resolved and people start treating women creators and artists with as much respect as the men.
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