Can't believe they thought they'd get away with ripping off such a masterpiece, smh.

For real though, I don't think I've ever seen word of mouth kill hype for a film so quickly. Really feels like no one cares about this movie now and we're just here to point and laugh at its failure.

I think the big problem with making a sequel to Joker is that the first film is told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, I was left wondering if certain scenes like his meeting with Thomas Wayne ever happened at all or if the woman those three Wall Street douches were harassing was real or if Arthur just imagined her to justify killing them and Joker 2 ruins the original's ambiguity.

The main problem with this sequel is that it undoes the original's story, which I felt as the death of Arthur Fleck and the birth of the Joker. Joker wouldn't regret anything he did, the way he'd react to Gary's testimony (which many have said is Folie a Duex's only great scene) is calling him an ungrateful little bastard.

Now a sequel COULD have worked, if they had continued with the gritty psychological crime drama route, take inspiration from Goodfellas and other mob flicks, showing how Joker got involved in the criminal underworld of Gotham; a mob boss who was an enemy of Thomas Wayne busts Joker out of Arkham to use him as a way to control the gangs of anarchists that have come to idolize Joker and Joker slowly begins taking over the mob from the inside.

I would have had a lot more respect for Philips if he had just said "You know what, I've already made two sequels to my previous huge hit, they were awful and existed for no reason other making money, so I won't make a Joker 2." But instead he went out of his way to undo the original, so….yeah, he's an asshole.