At least the first “Joker” movie, Todd Phillips’s 2019 origin story of the Gotham villain as antihero, had the bravado to take its protagonist’s revolt to noxious extremes. The abused, neglected, and damaged Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix)—accursed as son, lover, and comedian—takes violent revenge that quickly wins him fans and followers. The movie’s spirit of antiplutocratic revolt is inspired by right-wing vigilante injustice; it’s a fascistic fantasy dressed up in egalitarian righteousness. In Phillips’s new sequel, “Joker: Folie à Deux,” he walks back the hectic ideology that gave that earlier movie its energy, however dubious; the sequel is merely innocuous, grandiose in its scale of production but minor in its dramatic substance.
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