Within just a month of each other, DC’s biggest projects of the year have come out, The Penguin and Joker: Folie à Deux. The Penguin is a spin-off to Matt Reeve’s The Batman (2022), focusing on gangster Oswald “Oz” Cobb and the aftermath of the Riddler’s terrorist attack on Gotham. Meanwhile, Folie à Deux is a sequel to the 2019 Joker movie, directed by Todd Phillips, showing Arthur Fleck’s life after killing Murray Franklin. While one manages to exceed all expectations, the other nearly ruins its predecessor and proves a disappointment, and The Penguin wasn’t the disappointment.
Elaborating on earlier, The Penguin takes place after Matt Reeve’s film, with Gotham as a whole trying to recover from Riddler’s actions, Batman focused on helping the citizens after the bombing, and the criminal underworld taking advantage of the lack of eyes on them. Since mafia boss Carmine Falcone died in the film, his empire gets handed off to his son Alberto… who our protagonist Oswald Cobb murders not even a scene into the first episode. We follow Oz as he tries to gain power for himself, as his new problem comes straight out of Arkham to take revenge on the Falcone family, Carmine’s daughter Sofia.
I have watched all of the series, and it was phenomenal! While most were iffy on the idea at first, they’ve made a fantastic story on Oz’s path to the top while staying distinct from shows before. Through our time with Oz and Sofia, everything makes sense while still shocking audiences. Our perspectives and basis on both Oz and Sofia change drastically throughout the show, but it always makes sense for them. We’ve seen some excellent growth on all ends of Reeve’s world, and it’s kept viewers wondering what we’ll see next, along with where this series will leave Gotham in time for The Batman Part II. I don’t want to spoil a lot, especially closer to the ending, as I truly believe it is best to watch it in full. It is undoubtedly one of the best TV shows in years, and probably one of DC’s best live-action shows ever.
On the other hand, we have Todd Phillip’s sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux. While it isn’t entirely fair to compare a series to a film, Joker has the odd effect where the longer it could’ve gone, the worse it would’ve been. Unlike The Penguin, which uses every moment of its longer runtime to the fullest, Joker: Folie à Deux struggles to use its 140 minutes. It often resorts to song-and-dance numbers (of pre-existing songs no less, there’s only one original song) to fill up time, which unlike the director says, rarely added to Arthur or Harleen’s characters and wasn’t required to understand them. It makes sense that it fills up so much of the movie though, the rest wasn’t great. While it has some good moments, such as Gary’s retelling of his trauma from the first film, the rest is unclear and lacks the original’s direction. This one I don’t mind spoiling, as it came out over a month ago, and it is just as bad as people say it was.
Arthur particularly was a mess, and not in his usual manner; instead of a descent into madness, it tried to hint at Arthur having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, and that the Joker was an alternate personality (aka an alter). Then, they seemed to just go back on it, with Arthur renouncing his Joker identity by the end. It served as a defense for him in court before he claimed it was all an act, but was there no better way to get an insanity plea without the writers misrepresenting a real disorder? It contributes to the already harmful view that people with mental health issues, especially identity disorders, are evil monsters. It didn’t even contribute much anyway, as it was merely a plot device.
Some people try to defend this, and the film as a whole, with the sentiment that Todd Phillips wanted to anger fans who idolized Joker rather than see Arthur for who he is. Still, that doesn’t make the film any better. Arthur’s fate was ultimately to remain the same sad, broken man he used to be, despite all the traumatizing and life-changing moments he went through, alongside evidence that he was broken beyond repair after killing Murray. If the point of your story was to halt the direction of your last one and to disappoint people, congratulations, you made a disappointing film because you wanted to, but it’s still disappointing. If you want a way to prevent audiences from taking the wrong lessons from your protagonist (not hero), take what Reeves did with Oz Cobb. He could’ve easily been a misinterpreted genius who wanted society to fall, but he showed, not told, audiences he was not to be trusted nor worshipped.
Overall, while The Penguin manages to build Oswald while maintaining his trajectory to be the kingpin of Gotham’s underworld, Joker: Folie à Deux erases a lot of Arthur’s original development before giving him an untimely demise. The original Joker was fantastic on its own, but this jukebox-musical court drama ended Arthur’s story sloppily while setting up unnamed psychopaths to take up the Joker mantle in the future. It didn’t need to exist and I’m hoping Phillips ends his universe here, while the hardest part of watching The Penguin was knowing I’ll have to wait until the end of 2026 for more.
