A Star Is Born appeared destined to make us gag till it was over, yet Gaga turned it into a phenomenon. The nicest thing about the House of Gucci was her. Maybe a little theatrical flair is all this gloomy comic book series needs.
The Joker from 2019 has a peculiar place in culture. Everyone regarded it with some skepticism when it was first released in October of that year. After all, isn’t part of what makes The Joker so fascinating about him his vague madness? Did we really need to know his past? Furthermore, considering how tragically devastating Heath Ledger’s portrayal of Joaquin Phoenix was in The Dark Knight, did we really need another take on the role?
Still, critics be damned, after the movie opened, everything took off. With ease, it made a billion dollars at the box office, won Phoenix the Oscar for Best Actor, and perhaps stoked one of the most divisive debates of the pre-COVID era (because the metric actually doesn’t exist anymore!). Joker was either a derivative, lazy mess or a perfectly twisted depiction of mental illness, depending on who you spoke to. It became your mother’s new favorite movie and was embraced by incel 4channers as a manifesto against “society, man” at the same time.
A sequel was unavoidable despite the fact that everything leading up to its release suggested that it was meant to be a stand-alone character drama due to its box office success. Nevertheless, we had low morale by the time 2022 arrived and we received confirmation. Having recently emerged from a catastrophic plague, the idea of voluntarily returning to the dark, pessimistic wolves was unappealing (‘Haven’t we suffered enough!’). Then, however, something amazing occurred: Lady Gaga.
All it takes to change the atmosphere in a room full of Harley Quinns is one Stefani Germanotta. A change occurred when she was revealed as the romantic foil in the Jukebox musical (!!)—that is, your LGBT Twitter buddies started showing interest in Joker 2. When Lady Gaga takes on a film project, something visceral happens. Her extreme seriousness and reverence towards the role of an actor lends an inherent campiness to everything she does, which is about as foreign to the first Joker as the idea of subtext. Without Gaga channeling Patrizia Reggiani’s ghost like a poltergeist, would House of Gucci have been perceived as anything more than a mediocre historical biopic? Most likely not. Not only is she a talented actress (she was nominated for an Oscar, in case you missed it), but she’s also one of the most intriguing and influential people in pop culture.
We see a somewhat lighter side of Joker in the recently released first teaser for Joker: Folie à Deux. Though Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck may be shambling through the dank hallways of Arkham Asylum like a malnourished goblin and letting out a classic maniacal cackle in the rain, some of the film’s most devastating themes—loneliness being one that really seemed to hit the more remote corners of the internet like a runaway bullet train—are tempered by Quinn, played by Gaga. These two insane kids managed to find each other somehow! And in opposition to Tom Jones’s loud singing The partnership that appears to be based around an escapeist hallucination from the sanitarium hallways in “What the World Needs Now Is Love” appears to be fun, and the first Joker wasn’t very fun. They dance about the city in opulent homes and cause mayhem on the Wall Street steps.
Joker: With Gaga on board, Folie à Deux will be at least 50% better, even though it will still capitalize on the cynicism and aimless anarchism of the first picture. On October 4, we’ll take our seats in the theater. Come along with us.