In a scathing critique, Tim Dillon, who plays an Arkham Asylum guard in Joker: Folie à Deux, has trashed the movie as “the worst film ever made” during an appearance on The Joe Rogan podcast.
Dillon believes the sequel’s troubles stem from the backlash surrounding the original Joker. “After the first Joker, there was a lot of talk like, ‘Ooh, this was loved by incels. This was loved by the wrong kinds of people. This sent the wrong kind of message. Male rage! Nihilism!’ All these think pieces. And then I think ‘What if we went the other way?’ And now they have Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga tap dancing to a point where it’s insane.”
The song-and-dance heavy film, which Warner Bros. declined to market as a musical, has been a commercial and critical disappointment.
It grossed just under $38 million domestically on its opening weekend and fell 81 percent in its second weekend.
The movie holds a 32 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and received a D CinemaScore from audiences.
Dillon shared his on-set experience, revealing that cast members suspected they were working on a flawed project. “It has no plot. We would sit there, me and these other guys… and I’d turn to one of them, and we’d hear this crap, and I’d go, ‘What the f**k is this?’ And they’d go, ‘This is going to bomb, man.’ I go, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever…’ We were talking about it at lunch, and we’d go, ‘What is the plot? Is there a plot? I don’t know, I think he falls in love with her in the prison?’ … It’s not even hate watchable. That’s how terrible it is.”
In contrast, Quentin Tarantino praised Joker: Folie à Deux on The Bret Easton Ellis podcast last month. “I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously… I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking. But I thought it was going to be an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is… And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up into it. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up.”
