I'm more and more convinced that there's an inability to grasp meaning in narratives that leaves modern critics clueless of how plot can depend on and be driven by theme (how form follows content), and really in how to think about theme. The evidence of which is that Joker II has only a 33% rating on RT, especially from critics saying the story doesn't go anywhere. The story was always about something most of them don't get (rather than whether he gets out and "wins" etc.): where will the people with psychological struggles wind up in the end? Will they simply suffer a materialist lex talionis? Will they escape and own being mad "heroes"? Will they be allowed to find some progress of healing in peace? Or will they be manipulated by those who romanticize and push the psychotic break and then toss them away when they can't live up to the calling because they really do want rest from ills the manipulators would just use as fuel for the rockets they can't fuel themselves but can craft and control, and then will the ideological, dark-romanticist manipulators hijack the story when they (we, the bungled and the botched, to use Gilliam's paraphrase of Nietzsche) are spent and tossed, conscript it as an origin story in some sham mythology? (oh yea, almost forgot, from some of the theories that went around with the first film: will they be used as theory fodder by religious "insightful" gurus).
(And
let us not forget the plan by some "christians" in America for the
diagnosed: blame all of us [and probably infringe other of our rights on
that basis] for gun violence that could have been avoided by sensible
regulation that makes it harder for the few who have done it to get the guns to do it with in the first place.)
On another front: I wasn't sure what to expect of the whole "musical" thing, but I think it worked. Phillips is said to have "struggled" with calling it a musical, and I think that sums up the uniqueness of the use it makes of music. When *the actions accompanying the musical numbers* are so clearly NOT in the real world of the narrative, it can't really be a musical (when they sing Sunrise Sunset in Fiddler on the Roof, the singing is not how the things would have been said, but it really is a wedding scene in the material world of the narrative . . whereas there is no show stage where J and H have a Sonny-and-Cher style show . . . or in Fiddler when Tevye signs Tradition beginning walking down the road and then finishes it in his barn, even though in the real world of the narrative he would not be breaking a fourth wall or singing a performance number, he still does, in the real world of the narrative, walk down the road and put his horse in the stable in his barn and feed his chickens, whereas in Joker Arthur does not dance actually dance around the TV room in the prison in the real world of that narrative, he simply imagines it while staring blankly at the TV; actually, to a certain extent, the *song* there is more a part of real narrative by them showing he is imagining it, so it's in his head as a real place in the real world of the narrative---this means specifically the song, not the action . . . in Fiddler, while the action is really there, the song is not actually in the material-world narrative, on its page . . . but this starts to get a bit into the weeds of defining the genre of musical: Anna Kendrick is known for the Pitch Perfect films [which I have never seen, but I do like her in a certain kind of role, particularly the character type she played in The Accountant], and in an interview, she made the caveat that her Pitch Perfect films are not technically musicals because the characters know they are singing when they are, whereas in a musical, characters are not aware on the page that they are; I think there's a point there: definitely in Fiddler, they never know they are singing [with *maybe* the exception of Sabbath Prayer], likewise for Hello Dolly, but in Sound of Music, some of the times they don't know they are singing [e.g., A Few of My Favorite Things], but other times they do, like Edelweiss and the So Long, Farewell, both of those songs both when they are in the home and when they are on the festival stage), but the songs in J2 are definitely musical numbers for conveying particular theme material (not action-film-soundtrack uses of rock songs etc., or even the use of the marching band theme in the first film).
And beyond that . . . I like that it wraps out as its own thing but could also provide fodder if they want to, say, bring Gaga or another like her in as HQ in a sequel to the newest Batman (most probably another actress: given Gaga's comments on her focus in handling the music, in purposefully NOT singing as she has been professionally trained to do, but rather as a real untrained, rough and raw character would, I don't think she will be interested in pursuing the type of character there is in that kind of action movie, rather than this more crossover-genre film), . . . but it doesn't have to be more than the most basic fodder: you could bring in the new Harvery Dent and Joker (whether Joker is played by the guy here or the actor from The Batman, either way with the same story of hijacking the story of an Arthur) and the most basic physical fact but not need to have any more continuity than that with the two Todd Phillips films, and leave them to be their own unique cinematic project.
