Joker: Folie à Deux may not have fared well with critics or at the box office, but it has one high-profile fan: Quentin Tarantino. On a recent episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino expressed enthusiasm for the controversial Joker sequel, which has made only about $60 million domestically and $201 million worldwide, a significant decline from the 2019 original's billion-dollar earnings.
“I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking,” Tarantino shared, initially expecting to appreciate the film from a distance as more of an "intellectual exercise" rather than as a cinematic experience. He admitted, “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.” But Tarantino ended up being fully immersed, particularly enjoying the musical numbers and noting, “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.”
Tarantino also saw a bit of his film Natural Born Killers in Folie à Deux, comparing Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) to his own disturbed pair of killers, Mickey and Mallory. “As much as the first one was indebted to Taxi Driver, this seems pretty fucking indebted to Natural Born Killers, which I wrote,” he said, calling the sequel “the Natural Born Killers I would have dreamed of seeing.” As the film's writer, he appreciated Todd Phillips’ direction, saying, “I loved the direction he took. I mean, the whole movie was the fever dream of Mickey Knox.”
Finding humour in the film, Tarantino mentioned he enjoyed seeing it in a nearly empty IMAX theatre, where he could “laugh without bothering everybody.” His praise also extended to Phoenix’s performance, which he called “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life,” and to Phillips, who Tarantino suggested took on a Joker-like approach with the film itself. “The Joker directed the movie. The entire concept—even him spending the studio’s money—he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it,” he added, noting Phillips' playful defiance toward the comic book world and Hollywood.
Tarantino, who liked the sequel more than the original, considered the 2019 Joker film “one-note” except for its climactic scene where Phoenix’s character shoots Robert De Niro’s host live on air, which he called “one of the best scenes made in the last 20 years of this century. Easily!”
While Folie à Deux may have alienated some fans with its musical elements and surprising twists, Tarantino considers these daring choices the film’s true strengths.
