Recently, while Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis received criticism from audiences and critics alike, a few filmmaking peers had given their impressions of the film with some high praise. Guillermo Del Toro glowed about the Coppola passion project when he said, “Francis is still the same bold, fearless, inventive filmmaker that he was in his 20’s. I was Swept by Megalopolis!” And Steven Soderbergh, who has the horror film, Presence, coming out, reacted, “WOW! This might be the craziest thing ever shot on American soil. Certainly, one of the most sustained acts of pure imagination I’ve ever seen. I dreamt about it all night—it was inspiring!”
Now that Joker: Folie à Deux has been released, and to its own underwhelming response, one filmmaker that has come to its defense is Coppola. The Megalopolis director, who has been outspoken about the Marvel films, took to his official Instagram account to show his support for the Todd Phillips sequel. He posted a picture of Joker‘s poster with the caption, “@ToddPhillips films always amaze me and I enjoy them thoroughly. Ever since the wonderful The Hangover he’s always one step ahead of the audience never doing what they expect. Congratulations to Joker: Folie à Deux! I am also honored that the films DP, Lawrence Sher, mentioned that the film is visually inspired by One From the Heart.”
Despite being a sequel to a movie that made a billion dollars worldwide, Joker: Folie à Deux has posted a truly disastrous opening. According to Deadline, the film didn’t even crack $40 million this weekend, with them estimating a dismal $39 million finish. It seems fans didn’t go for Todd Phillips’s rather ambitious idea to make this a musical, with it peppered with fantasy musical sequences in between some rather dull courtroom melodrama. The star pairing of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga wasn’t enough to win over fanboys or general audiences, who slammed it with an almost unheard of (for a comic book movie) D CinemaScore rating.
In his review for Joker: Folie à Deux, JoBlo’s Chris Bumbray stated, “As such, the audience who cosplayed Joker and Harley Quinn at the screening I attended couldn’t help but look a little dejected as the credits rolled. The film lacked the same kind of impact the original movie had despite a longer, bloated running time and a much heftier budget.”