Folie a DUH: Studio Scrambling to Figure Out Why a Movie That Was an Undisguised "F*** You" to Its Fans Failed to Find an Audience

Here's a quick EduGraphic. The best point is the first one: Joachin Phoenix reportedly awoke from a dream (which one might imagine was in an altered state) and said he had the greatest idea for a sequel -- it should be a musical!

Todd Phillips, who never wanted to make this movie but changed his mind when they offered him $20 million, supposedly loved the idea. Or, more likely, he just couldn't be bothered enough to care and so he said "Sure let's do what this idiot just said."

The thing about Phillips isolating himself at a ranch during the premiere is no big deal. A lot of directors do that. I believe Spielberg and Lucas were hiding out in Hawaii during the release of their films that they started talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But... One imagines Phillips knew he had a problem on his hands and didn't want to hear from anyone in the opening weekend.

From media shill-site Variety: How They Built The Bomb.

Inside the 'Joker: Folie a Deux' Debacle: Todd Phillips 'Wanted Nothing to Do' With DC on the $200 Million Misfire

The article notes that the two men put in charge of Warner Bros. DC universe, James Gunn and Peter Saffron, did not attend the premiere for this bomb.

Because no one wants to be found near a corpse.

Insiders say the duo's glaring absence for a film that is based on one of the biggest draws in the DC canon underscores a dysfunctional dynamic that played out behind the scenes on the ill-fated Warner Bros. musical. Todd Phillips "wanted nothing to do with DC" during the making of the film, says one agent familiar with the director's unique carve-out, which allowed him to bypass any oversight from the brand's gatekeepers. Although Gunn has publicly supported the film on social media, Phillips has distanced himself from DC. As the animated title-card sequence unspooled inside the iconic Hollywood cinema in the opening minutes, it became apparent that Phillips had just given DC the middle finger. There was no DC Studios logo.

Gunn has since been silent about the movie. He doesn't want it tarnishing his own brand.

"If the first movie was about some down-on-his-luck, mentally ill guy in a downtrodden city, it makes maybe $150 [million] worldwide. Not a billion," says a source familiar with the internal awkwardness. "People showed up because that guy was Joker."

(A DC spokesperson downplays any tensions and says Gunn was busy directing the Max series "Peacemaker" in Atlanta, which had lost a day of production due to Hurricane Helene, while Safran was sick. A Warners spokesperson notes that a DC logo appears at the end of the "Joker" sequel. Phillips declined to comment for this story.)

He doesn't have access to Twitter when he's hanging around waiting for the crew to finish setting the lights? No, he's hiding because he doesn't want the radiation from this bomb poisoning him.

Now that the dust has settled on the sequel's disastrous opening weekend, plenty of soul-searching is taking place on the Burbank lot. The overarching question being asked is: Why spend $200 million to make -- and nearly $100 million to market -- a tentpole that ignores the DC fanbase? And "ignores" may be putting it mildly. As a Rolling Stone review of the film succinctly put it: "'Joker: Folie a Deux' Has a Message for Fans: Go F-ck Yourselves."

Alas, the fanboys and fangirls stayed home, resulting in a shocking $37.7 million domestic opening for Phillips' follow-up to his 2019 "Joker," an enormous success that cost just $60 million and earned $1.1 billion. Such disregard for the base has brand repercussions.

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The movie began production in December 2022, two months after Gunn and Safran took control of DC, and many expected the duo to provide notes and feedback on the R-rated musical, especially given the capital outlay involved. But Phillips balked and would only liaise with De Luca and Abdy.

You know who's probably putting this out to the media? James Gunn. He wants it to be very clear that he had nothing to do with this, and that, while he did offer "notes" to Phillips, Phillips gave him the finger. So you can't blame Gunn's "notes."

And he has done little to dispel the appearance of friction, even though Gunn and Safran were on hand for the first director's cut screening for the studio....

Now Warner Bros.' higher-ups go to the press to say "he ignored us, too!" Zaslav reportedly asked Phillips to reduce the budget by filming in London, which is cheaper, and the UK provides a tax incentive for filming there.

He told Zaslev to get bent. There would be no reducing the hefty price tag. (Phillips' $20 million salary was a part of that price tag, of course.)

The studio also objected to debuting the film at the Venice Film Festival. Note that that was about 45 days before the premiere, so that gave bad reviews plenty of time to set in with the public. Phillips insisted on a Venice debut, and yes, the reviews were bad and ending of the film leaked.

Phillips refused test screenings, claiming he didn't want the ending to leak. But it leaked after Venice. (It's a divisive ending. And the original version was worse.) Those test screenings could have told him what the public objected to in the film, but he was too high on his own supply and wouldn't compromise his artistic vision.

Other battles of will between Phillips and Warners ensued. Phillips refused to test screen "Joker 2." So its premiere in Venice marked the first time an audience saw it. The critics rejected it, and the film tallied a disastrous 33% score on Rotten Tomatoes well before earning a dismal "D" CinemaScore. To put that grade into context, the much reviled "Madame Web" landed a "C+" earlier this year. (A Warners spokesperson says, "Given the film contains spoilers, the studio did not want to unnecessarily divulge plot points too early to test audiences, but rather, allow moviegoers to discover the film in their own time.")

Um, a would-be blockbuster opening in 4,000 theaters isn't built to allow audience to discover it in their own time. It's made to make $200 million opening weekend.

...

"No one could get through to Todd," says one source directly involved with the film. "And the one thing about genre stuff: If you don't listen and pay attention to what the fan expectations are, you're going to fail."

Why doesn't anyone in Hollywood understand this (except for this one source)?

This Variety article is written by a goof who was one of the cringing fearful shitlibs worried the movie would "incite incels," but even he understands that attacking your own audience is bad business.

'Joker: Folie a Deux's' Fatal Flaw Is Turning the Fans Into the Villains of the Sequel

I hated Todd Phillips' original "Joker," which made me feel like a crank when the hit anti(super)hero movie went on to earn the top prize at Venice, an Oscar best picture nomination and more than a billion dollars at the box office back in 2019.

That film struck a nerve with me -- not in a good way, though I fiercely believe that provocation can be one of art's highest aims -- by transforming the beloved Batman villain into a poster boy for incels everywhere. I know people like Arthur Fleck, and the last thing they (or any of us) need is such a film to encourage them. I feared it would go down like "Scarface," as a fictive role model for sick minds.

Flash forward five years, and the character is back for a scandalously unpopular sequel, except that this time, it feels like "Joker" hates us -- or, more to the point, it's as if Phillips turned on his original audience. (Turns out, fans are returning the favor. I spoke to a couple theater managers yesterday, and they reported a strange phenomenon: People are canceling their tickets, or simply not showing up, because of the bad reviews.)

Ask yourself, who is the villain in "Joker: Folie a Deux"? Hint: It's not Arthur Fleck. Instead of fearing Joaquin Phoenix's character, it's his fans we ought to be worried about -- those who want him to reprise his role as the face-painted chaos-monger.

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You want to know what's wrong with the "Joker" sequel? It's boring.

I've seen critics note that the movie is mostly one long courtroom scene which simply repeats -- or "relitigates," as this article puts it -- the events of the first movie.

I know that retracing your steps -- going back to places, repeating actions and dialogue -- is just absolute poison in a movie, which is always about moving forward. If you go back a step every time you go forward a step, the audience can see the movie is not progressing but just wasting time.

The YouTuber "CaptainMidnight" faults the film for undoing the whole conclusion of Joker and reverting to the midpoint of that film. That is, the first movie is all about Arthur Fleck coming to terms with the idea that he is Joker, and accepting that, after fighting it for most of the movie. In this movie, it reverts back to Arthur fighting this. So the movie undoes the dramatic choice he makes at the end of the first movie, and once again has him go through the same process of debating if he is Joker. This time, he decides he's not, but the movie makes us tread the same ground again.

Hollywood's had so many gigantic bombs the past two years that it's considering doing the unthinkable: Asking the actual fans of these genre films for advice about what their expectations are, and what their red lines are.

Leftwingers have been shrieking, shrieking about this.

This article itself frames this as "Hollywood considers bringing 'the toxic fandom' into the creative process."

"The Acolyte" was the latest high-profile target of "toxic fandom," the catchall term for when fan criticism curdles from good-faith dissatisfaction into a relentlessly negative, often bigoted online campaign against either the project or its stars or creative leaders. In a franchise economy increasingly dependent upon established audience devotion to drive the bottom line, the threat of toxic fandoms poisoning that enthusiasm has become a seemingly intractable headache for almost every studio. And it's only getting worse.

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Perhaps the greatest irony of this phenomenon is the disproportionate impact these toxic fandoms have relative to their actual number.

Ah yes: the "Tiny Minority of Haters" paradigm.

Weird that this tiny minority is simultaneously so enormous that millions and millions of people around the world are rejecting these movies.

...

Those who did talk with Variety all agreed that the best defense is to avoid provoking fandoms in the first place. In addition to standard focus group testing, studios will assemble a specialized cluster of superfans to assess possible marketing materials for a major franchise project.

"They're very vocal," says the studio exec. "They will just tell us, 'If you do that, fans are going to retaliate.'" These groups have even led studios to alter the projects: "If it's early enough and the movie isn't finished yet, we can make those kinds of changes."

Several studio insiders say they often put their talent through a social media boot camp; in some cases, when a character is intentionally challenging a franchise's status quo, studios will, with the actor's permission, take over their social media accounts entirely. When things get really bad -- especially involving threats of violence -- security firms will scrub talent information from the internet to protect them from doxxing.

The "Toxic Fans" are doing exactly what the SJWs did for years: They are pressuing studios to make movies for them. The SJWs demanded that every male hero be gender-flipped to female and every white character (especially gingers) to black. Hollywood didn't call them "toxic" -- instead, they catered to this actually-tiny minority of incessantly online Identity Warriors. All the "toxic" fans are doing now is trying to push back against the SJWs never-ending brigading and pressure campaigns to object these franchises with nonstop leftwing propaganda messaging.

The leftwingers who demand genre films be made to please their tastes are heroes, the normies who say "No, stop this, make these films without a leftwing agenda" are villains.

But here's the thing:

There sure do seem to be a lot more "villains" than "heroes" in the audience, huh?

posted by Ace at 04:28 PM

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