Quentin Tarantino Praises ‘Joker 2’ and Says Joaquin Phoenix Gives ‘One of the Best Performances I’ve Ever Seen in My Life’: It’s a ‘F— You’ to ‘Comic Book Geeks’ and Hollywood
by Zack Sharf · Variety“Joker: Folie à Deux” bombed with critics and at the box office, but not with Quentin Tarantino. The filmmaker recently appeared on “The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast” and raved over the divisive “Joker” sequel, which is barely at the $60 million mark domestically after nearly a month in theaters. The movie’s worldwide total stands at $201 million, a huge nosedive from the 2019 movie’s billion dollar gross.
“I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking,” Tarantino said. “But I thought it was going to be an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is. And 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. And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up into it. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up. 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.”
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Tarantino said that he saw a bit of his “Natural Born Killers” story in the “Joker” sequel, comparing Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga’s Lee Quinzel to that movie’s disturbed serial killer couple Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis).
“As much as the first one was indebted to ‘Taxi Driver,’ this seems pretty fucking indebted to ‘Natural Born Killers,’ which I wrote. That’s the ‘Natural Born Killers’ I would have dreamed of seeing. As the guy who created Mickey and Mallory, I loved what they did with it,” Tarantino said. “I loved the direction he took. I mean, the whole movie was the fever dream of Mickey Knox.”
“On top of all that, I thought it was really funny,” Tarantino added, saying that he saw the movie in an “almost empty IMAX theater” and therefore could “laugh without bothering everybody. I know I’m laughing at scenes that other people wouldn’t be laughing it.”
Tarantino had particular praise for Phoenix, whose performance as the Joker in the 2019 movie won him the Oscar for best actor (over Leonardo DiCaprio in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”). The director said Phoenix gives “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life in this movie,” referring to “Folie à Deux,” and he also commended director Todd Phillips for being a joker himself.
“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, all right?” Tarantino said. “And then his big surprise gift — haha! — the jack-in-the-box, when he offers you his hand for a handshake and you get a buzzer with 10,000 volts shooting you — is the comic book geeks. He’s saying fuck you to all of them. He’s saying fuck you to the movie audience. He’s saying fuck you to Hollywood. He’s saying fuck you to anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers […] And Todd Phillips is the Joker. Un film de Joker, all right, is what it is. He is the Joker.”
Tarantino loved the sequel far more than the 2019 original, which he found “one-note” for most of the runtime until it reached its climactic scene where Joaquin’s Joker shoots Robert De Niro’s talk show host live on air. The director called that moment “one of the best scenes made in the last 20 years, of this century. Easily! The whole movie was worth it for that.”
With its several musical numbers and divisive twist ending, “Joker: Folie à Deux” alienated a lot of comic book moviegoers. But Tarantino views these provocative choices as strengths. Listen to Tarantino’s full discussion on “The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast” here.