There are, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped, two great tragedies in life: one, not getting what you want – and the other, getting it. It’s an aphorism that will be keenly felt by comic book fans this weekend, as Joker: Folie à Deux arrives in cinemas. The film – a sequel to 2019’s Joker , the dour DC Comics adaptation that reimagined Batman’s clown nemesis as a violent, frustrated incel in the Travis Bickle mould – feels like a pointed attempt to adult-ise the superhero genre. Plenty of comic book fans have been clamouring for exactly this: a superhero film that demands to be taken seriously, a gritty, grounded story that just so happens to take place in a world of caped vigilantes. Well, now they’ve got it.
Over the past decade and a half, superhero adaptations have been the dominant force in popular cinema. But for all the money they make, for all the cultural oxygen they inhale, there’s always a caveat: the refusal, in some critical circles, to regard them as substantial works of art. Martin Scorsese’s likening of Marvel films to “theme parks” is a comparison that has stuck like tar. Likewise the ubiquitous “fast food of cinema” analogy. But it’s an inferiority complex that is only halfway justified. Yes, the genre still has its naysayers. But even before Joaquin Phoenix ’s performance in Joker won him Best Actor at the Academy Awards, superhero films had hardly been shut out of the corridors of prestige: as early as 1979, Superman won an Oscar (for visual effects), while The Dark Knight , with Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning villain turn, showed that critics were perfectly willing to recognise the artistic merits of a great comic book blockbuster. But still, fans called to push the boat further out, to make ever more self-serious films, an object utterly impervious to accusations of frivolity. Folie à Deux is this object. It’s credible, restrained… and completely, utterly dull .