Quentin Tarantino says he loved Joker 2

Quentin Tarantino has come out in support of the critical and commercial flop Joker: Folie à Deux.

The writer-director sang the musical sequel’s praises during a recent appearance on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast. The Todd Phillips-directed follow-up to his 2019 hit Joker scored a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

“I really, really liked it, really,” he said. “A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the film-making 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.”

Tarantino added that Joaquin Phoenix gave “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life” and that the film offered the version of Natural Born Killers that he “would have dreamed of seeing”. Tarantino’s original script for the Oliver Stone-directed satire was drastically rewritten back in the 1990s.

He also praised Phillips. “The Joker directed the movie,” he said. “The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money – he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? … 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.”

The Pulp Fiction auteur called it a “really funny” film and said that he “really liked the musical sequences

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/29/quentin-tarantino-praises-flop-joker-sequel