Poll of the Day > Joker 2 made less money than Morbius domestically on its opening weekend.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.imdb.com/news/ni64872628/?ref_=tt_nwr_1

Joker: Folie Deux: $37.8 million

Morbius: $39 million

The Marvels: $46.1 million

I'm honestly surprised more people didn't go watch it just because the first movie was so popular, despite Joker 2's very poor pre-release word of mouth.

That's because it wasn't Jokin' Time.



ForteEXE3850 posted...

despite Joker 2's very poor pre-release word of mouth.

That's the thing - the Internet is powerful.

In the old days, a shit movie that was properly hyped or that was a sequel to a popular film could usually coast for a few weeks before word of mouth started to torpedo its sales. But now word of mouth hits the Internet so fast that we can literally see drop-off in opening weekends (something you never used to see).

With a movie that isn't review embargoed, where bad reviews will be getting posted even before opening weekend, that's more than enough to kill the momentum of any film. And Joker feels like the sort of film people wouldn't necessarily be seeing on a whim, but would definitely check reviews for first. The audience for the first movie likely skewed more towards the Internet-savvy crowd than the sort of person who is just a clueless parent taking their kids to the movies, for instance.

When people are putting out reviews like "The first film was great, but this one feels like it actively hates the audience of the first film", there's not a ton of incentive for people to go see it. So they hold off, then more bad reviews come out, and eventually they just decide to pass on it entirely. Especially in a world where there is so much media out there, no single human could ever watch everything. There is always something better asking for your time, so why waste it on something that seems like it's bad?

Doubly so when you add in the inconvenience of going to a theater and paying exorbitant prices to see it. There will certainly be people out there who just decide to maybe catch it once it hits streaming to see if it's actually as bad as people said it was. There are also people who've just stopped caring about it entirely and will never bother seeing it.

I thought the first movie was pretty pretentious garbage with a few standout moments so eh.

The first movie would have been significantly better with no ties to DC, and even then, would not have been a film which warranted a sequel.

They literally premiered this at a festival a month in advance, that means the internet knew it was trash like a hundred years ago.

And this is very much not a film targeted at normies.

Honestly it's unclear at this point who it was targeted at. It's a super hero film that hates super heroes, a Joker film that hates the Joker, an edgy film with zero edge and a musical with shitty songs.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Honestly it's unclear at this point who it was targeted at. It's a super hero film that hates super heroes, a Joker film that hates the Joker, an edgy film with zero edge and a musical with s***ty songs.

That's fairly similar to the draw to The Boys, so, it's not a completely wrong idea.

I didn't even know it existed.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/30d31796.jpg

maybe big creators will finally see this as an sign to stop hating their own audiences.

Nade_Duck posted...

maybe big creators will finally see this as an sign to stop hating their own audiences.

I thought you were going to say "As a sign to stop shitting out needless sequels." but that would be ridiculous.

rjsilverthorn posted...

I thought you were going to say "As a sign to stop shitting out needless sequels." but that would be ridiculous.

i'm trying to be at least a little realistic.

Nade_Duck posted...

maybe big creators will finally see this as an sign to stop hating their own audiences.

They won't.

They're still at the "Make up excuses, blame literally everything other than the actual problem, and insult the audience in the hopes that you can abuse them into obedience" stage.

To fix something, first you have to admit that it's broken. From the perspective of Hollywood, we're all just too stupid to appreciate their talent. The idea that people are rejecting poor writing and poor acting because it's bad is still kind of alien to them.

The next step is the part where they continue to be terrible, but try to come up with new ways to trick people into buying it anyway. Then the blind panic stage, aka the start throwing literally everything at the wall and hoping something sticks phase. Then the stupidly not understanding why the things that DID stick managed to stick phase.

Maybe at some point after that they might actually realize the astounding concept that audiences want well-written, well-produced, well-acted shows and films. That multiple generations of creators before them knew right from the start.

If anyone ever, for some reason, doubted the power of word of mouth on movies then Joker 2 is the easiest possible case to be made for it. Joker 1 made a billion (1,000,000,000) dollars and its sequel did worse than Morbius, a movie so bad it bombed, came back because of memes of how bad it was, and bombed again. I actually personally just discouraged someone I know from watching Joker 2 and I only know its shit from word of mouth.

I'm honestly a little impressed that a movie so ugly, boring, and bad was allowed to be intentionally made. And for $200 million, no less. Usually when I hear about movie money being wasted like that its Adam Sandler pantsing Netflix for like $30 million to make some unwatchable dogshit jobs program for his unfunny friends.

at least adam sandler isn't a total shitwad. at this point i fully support him ripping off studios to get vacations for himself and all his bros.

SomeUsername529 posted...

If anyone ever, for some reason, doubted the power of word of mouth on movies then Joker 2 is the easiest possible case to be made for it. Joker 1 made a billion (1,000,000,000) dollars and its sequel did worse than Morbius, a movie so bad it bombed, came back because of memes of how bad it was, and bombed again. I actually personally just discouraged someone I know from watching Joker 2 and I only know its shit from word of mouth.

There is an argument to be made (and I expect Hollywood to make it) that the original film benefited from being released pre-Covid, and pre-"Superhero Fatigue", when people were still eager for new content. But now that people are less willing to go to theaters post-Covid (and having gotten used to the idea of streaming services), and the massive glut of content (mainly from those same streaming services) has oversaturated the market for the genre, the level of interest is no longer there regardless of the film's quality.

I firmly agree that it's definitely failing because of word of mouth and its own lack of quality, but studios don't like to admit that when they can make excuses by pointing at other potential factors. And there are other factors probably playing a part as well.

The main problem is that we haven't really seen any massive superhero film successes post-Endgame other than No Way Home (and now Deadpool & Wolverine). So an exec with his head up his ass and an unwarranted air of superiority to the unwashed masses can easily blame the failure of any bad movie on the audience simply not wanting comic book movies anymore because the fad has passed. We'd need more massive successes to underline that it's mostly the bad movies that are failing.

Plus pushing diversity casting hard lets you accuse everyone of being a bigot when your movies fail, so that's an easy excuse for execs as well.