Audiences aren’t crazy about Joker: Folie à Deux. Todd Phillips’ musical sequel starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga received a rare D grade from CinemaScore, which measures movie appeal by polling moviegoers on opening night. Just as rare, critics and audiences are aligned in rejecting the R-rated DC movie: on Rotten Tomatoes, Joker 2 currently sits at 33% “rotten” on both the Tomatometer (critics score) and the Popcornmeter (audience score). That’s worse than the maligned box office bombs Borderlands and Megalopolis, which received the dreaded D+ grade from CinemaScore.
Not only is the Joker 2 CinemaScore lower than 2019’s Joker — which scored a B+ and went on to earn over $1 billion at the global box office — it’s the worst for any comic book-based movie in CinemaScore’s 45-year history. The Fox-made Marvel adaptation Fantastic Four (2015) was the previous record holder with a C- grade.
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Other comic book adaptations to score in the C+ range include Batman & Robin, The Spirit, Jonah Hex, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, R.I.P.D., the Jared Leto-fronted Morbius, and another widely maligned Spider-Man spinoff, 2024’s Madame Web. The 2019 Hellboy reboot was the first comic book movie to get a C grade since 1999’s Virus (based on the Dark Horse comic), a score not seen since Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987. Even 2004’s Catwoman — widely considered to be one of the worst comic book movies ever — managed to claw its way to a B grade, as did 2011’s Green Lantern.
With its D grade, Joker 2 joins the likes of Wing Commander (1999), American Psycho (2000), Jeeper Creepers (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Happening (2008), The Last Exorcism (2010), Movie 43 (2013), and The Snowman (2017).
“Friday night you have the fan base. That’s what we want,” CinemaScore founder Ed Mintz said of the company’s poll strategy in a 2016 interview. “And people always say, ‘You just want the fan base? So you’re going to give every movie an A?’ It doesn’t work that way. It really doesn’t. Yes, the grades will tend to be higher, therefore we will build into the system a curve that straightens that out.”
Mintz continued, “A’s generally are good, B’s generally are shaky, and C’s are terrible. D’s and F’s, they shouldn’t have made the movie, or they promoted it funny and the absolute wrong crowd got into it.”
The toxic word-of-mouth from early audiences seems to agree. Moviegoers have criticized the decision to make Joker 2 an asylum and court room-set jukebox musical, and there is fan backlash over Folie à Deux‘s controversial ending. The first movie scored the biggest October opening of all time over the same period in 2019, but the sequel is looking to bomb at the box office this weekend with an opening within range of 2023 superhero movie flops The Flash ($55 million) and The Marvels ($46 million).
Joker: Folie À Deux stars Oscar winners Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga as Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, with Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin) as Arkham State Prison guard Jackie Sullivan; Catherine Keener (Get Out) as Arthur’s lawyer, Maryanne Stewart; Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2) as Arthur’s ex-neighbor, Sophie Dumond; Steve Coogan (the Alan Partridge comedies) as interviewer Paddy Meyers; and Harry Lawtey (Industry) as prosecuting Gotham Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent.
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