Video game developer legend and now movie maker Hideo Kojima has delivered his verdict on Joker: Folie à Deux following its disastrous release, insisting the divisive film's reputation will likely change over the coming decades.
Joker: Folie à Deux has been a major bomb at the box office, earning scathing reviews from fans and critics alike. The Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga DC flick pulled in around $201 million in the global box office — a massive drop from the billion dollar success of the original movie.
IGN’s Joker: Folie à Deux review returned a 5/10. We said: “Despite the best efforts of Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, and an opening hour set in Arkham Asylum, Joker: Folie à Deux wastes its potential as a movie musical, a courtroom drama, and a sequel that has anything meaningful to say about or add to the first Joker.”
As the dust settles on the film’s failure, Kojima has waded in with his thoughts in a tweet that is part defense of the movie, part insistence that people will look more fondly upon it in the years to come… 10 or 20 years to come.
Here’s Kojima’s tweet in full:
I watched "Joker: Folie à Deux.” The beginning of the film is an animation sequence, reminiscent of the nostalgic "Looney Tunes", depicting a story of Joker and Joker’s shadow. In the trial that follows, the question of his multiple personality is argued from beginning to end. Is the Joker Arthur? Is the Joker another personality (his shadow)? Who exactly is Arthur? This revelation eventually transforms into a meta-perspective. In the previous film, “Joker,” was it really Joker who captivated audiences around the world? Or was it Arthur? This question is constantly raised to Lee and even to the people of Gotham City within the film. We live in an age of mass production of "poetic justice" heroes, a battle between good and evil. Lately, many spin-off films with a focus on the villains have been made. Can villains be superheroes too? Is this question posed on the big screen as a DC movie, too avant-garde? Was it the Joker that audiences around the world loved? Was it Arthur? This is where the reviews have diverged. Over the next 10 or 20 years, this film's reputation will likely change along with the permeation of hero movies to come. It may take some time for it to become a true "folie à deux.” But there is no doubt that everyone in the audience loved Joaquin and Gaga in this film 🤡
Kojima isn’t the only high-profile film buff to defend Joker: Folie à Deux. Last month, Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino praised the sequel, calling it the "Natural Born Killers I would have dreamed of seeing."
“I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking,” Tarantino said. “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’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie or that’s like a big, giant mess to some degree.
"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. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were. I find myself listening to the lyrics of ‘For Once in My Life’ in a way I never have before.”
Joker 2 has seen its fair share of controversy. While director Todd Phillips has insisted his film was "," he reportedly .
As for Kojima, he finally has his chance to make a mark on Hollywood with the movie adaptation of Death Stranding.
Photo by Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.