'Joker 2' Is So Bad It’s Almost Laughable

In 2019, a year now separated from us by enough catastrophic global events to feel like a remote archaeological era, the movie Joker, like it or not (I certainly didn’t), was a big deal. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and later garnered a leading 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, with star Joaquin Phoenix eventually winning Best Actor for his performance as a mentally ill would-be stand-up comic turned murderous clown. The movie also became the subject of heated discussion and not a little hand-wringing. Would its portrait of the comic-book villain as the lonely, misunderstood victim of mistreatment by a vaguely defined “society” inspire copycat acts of mayhem? Joker may have teetered uneasily in the balance between critiquing incel violence and being a commercial for it, but thankfully its many admirers kept their enthusiasm contained to the box office, where the film raked in over a billion dollars worldwide, shattering the all-time record for an R-rated movie.