Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A Marvel crossover, a Pixar sequel and a live-action Disney remake walk into a bar.
Sound like a lousy “Joker” sequel? Don’t worry — we’ve got one of those, too.
What do all of these films have in common, though? Just about one billion little slips of paper and a rush order on a dozen more sequels, that’s all.
It’s no secret to anyone who’s stepped foot onto the sticky carpet of a major multiplex in the past decade that the 2010s were majorly notable for Hollywood bosses’ desire to churn out mega-successful franchise flicks like it was going out of style. Unfortunately for them, in March 2020, it did — in dramatic fashion.
Nearly half a decade later, studios are ready — or desperate — for a return to form. Unfortunately for them, they’re faced with an increasingly divided moviegoing culture where viewers aren’t quite as willing to show up in droves to watch any old film with a “2” behind it.
In a decade that has already had its share of surprise hits and horrific flops, though, nothing highlights studios’ predicament quite as bluntly as the yawning — or smiling, if you prefer — void between “Joker” and its recently-released sequel.
One billion dollars, two Oscars and a bizarre cultural moment later, it’s safe to say that Todd Phillips’ “Joker” needs no introduction. Love it or hate it — and I do hate it — the success story of a $55 million DC Comics oddball that made back nearly 20 times its budget quickly overwrote its less admirable qualities.
“Joker: Folie à Deux,” which was released last weekend, however, threatens to turn the “Joker” duology into a veritable Two-Face of success and cohesion.
Produced for an egregious estimated budget of $200 million, Phillips’ musical sequel fell short of already-disappointing opening weekend predictions to gross $40 million, less than half of the first film’s $96.2 opening five years earlier, according to Variety.
The fact that “Folie à Deux” is a musical courtroom drama that actively undermines its predecessor does not make it a bad film — quite the opposite. As the follow-up to a billion-dollar franchise film, though? It’s a complete misalignment of expectations; the idea of a “Joker” sequel isn’t an immediate sell for most viewers, and the mixed messages sent from its marketing exacerbated confusion into apathy.
Massive COVID-ballooned budgets further steepen an individual film’s climb to success; if the creatives behind “Mission: Impossible 8” weren’t already preparing for the film to be their last, the reportedly almost $400 million budget will almost certainly have the final word in the matter.
The fact is that franchise films are becoming less cost-effective while simultaneously being less profitable; even someone who learned economics from “The Wolf of Wall Street” could spot the issue there.
“Folie à Deux” is just the beginning of this holiday season’s full-course buffet of stale, generally unappetizing offerings, though.
“Moana 2,” for example, will almost certainly fail to match either the commercial or critical heights of the first film or Disney’s other animated successes — in no small part because it formed as a retooling of an in-the-works Disney+ series.
As if the film weren’t doing a poor enough job of making its very existence known, its trailer also flounders in justifying itself to skeptical consumers. It’ll bring in the kiddos in the end, but you won’t hear its new songs echo across the cultural pantheon in the same vein as “How Far I’ll Go” and “Shiny” did in 2016, and that silence speaks volumes.
Couple this with other oh-so-familiar franchise faces with late 2024 releases like “Transformers,” “Sonic the Hedgehog,” “Venom” and *shudder* “The Lion King,” and it’s not hard to imagine why audiences might be scrolling through Fandango with trepidation.
Hollywood has demonstrated that it’s willing to break the mold even earlier this year with promising success stories like “Challengers,” “Longlegs” and “Dune: Part Two.” Even new entries in popular franchises like “Mad Max,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Alien” managed to excite new interest in their respective series.
When the chips are down and studios are in need of a big holiday hit, though, their willingness to exploit the consumer is plain to see. Faced with so much boldfaced corporate shamelessness, it’s hard to view even original or long-awaited projects like “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” as little more than entries in an investor-meeting PowerPoint.
The biggest moviegoing events since the pandemic have occurred out of a sense of audience ownership or discovery — in the case of releases such as “Top Gun: Maverick” or the Barbenheimer phenomenon — or even a believed acknowledgment of fans’ requests — “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” for example.
No one likes walking into a restaurant and being told what to order, and when theater hallways are full of nothing but grimaces, eyebrow raises and exclamations of, “Another? Already?”, it’s clear that Hollywood could greatly benefit from beefing up the menu.
Otherwise, with a continued streak of flops and underperformances that fail to gauge changing audience demands “Folie à Deux,” it seems Hollywood themselves are the only ones still missing the punchline.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.