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It's simpler than that. The director (Todd Philips) is only capable of creating mediocre slop. He debuted with a sex-comedy starring Tom Green and peaked through his Hangover series. Joker was the exception to the rule. Joker 2 was a return to his low-brow shock -value roots.
Phillips said in 2019, in the aftermath of his dark drama Joker release, that he had stopped making comedy films because of the backlash of "woke culture", saying: "Go try to be funny nowadays... There were articles written about why comedies don't work anymore – I'll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, 'Fuck this shit, because I don't want to offend you'. It's hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter.
He isn't a woke shill. He's just your run of the mill creatively bankrupt Hollywood director.
The first movie hid behind some iconic moments and Phoenix's powerful performance. Strip those away, and what remains is a bit nonsensical. He produced a star is born : a successful musical with Lady Gaga. Looks like he tried to cash in with the same combination, and the appetite for it wasn't there.
My theory:
James Gunn told Todd that this Joker series is a dead end. He won't use it in Gunn's DC cinematic universe and wants Joker dead. DC comics gives Todd a carte blanche to do what he wants. Dude goes full whack by throwing every trick in his book at it. Musical, rape, police brutality, Lady Gaga, Harley Quinn & death. That's how you get this mess.
This is by far the simplest explanation for me. A director and screenwriting team that don't really know what they're doing.
The problem with applying Hanlon's razor to Hollywood is that they are now so consistently stupid in one direction that it's functionally indistinguishable from malice.
I've now watched, in so many contexts, reputable critics repudiate more low brow anti-woke content mills for making conspiratorial claims that seem absurd to them, only to be proven wrong months if not days in the future.
I understand how it boggles the mind that people would waste millions of dollars on silly attempts at propaganda that's not even good at being propaganda in the first place. You have to imagine such profound levels of both incompetence and spite to model the behavior of some of these creative leads.
From what I could gather of how Hollywood actually works, it is all out of stupidity, because most everybody there is a hack that owes their position to nepotism and politicking. Talent is one in a million even in the upper strata of management, and those precious few are the least likely to care about politics in the naive lesser sense.
And yet, for some reason, which possibly only amounts to the cultural selection of California, they all behave as if they really are part of a cabal whose whole goal is to spite white heterosexual men at any cost to others or to themselves.
California's 2 economic capitals don't talk too much. SoCal and Bay Area might as well be in 2 different states. There really isn't much of 'California-wide' anything. NYC <-> LA have more cultural exchanged than SF <-> LA.
Hollywood has always been stupid. What's changed is competition. Their stupidity is now an existential risk. So you're seeing frantic & ill-considered moves that 'securely stupid' industry could hide away. Hollywood accounting & incestuous cartels used to be able to hide a lot of terrible movies. Not so much anymore.
The last decade has put Hollywood in crisis mode. It comes from 3 sources:
Nothing about this is surprising. We've seen it before with News Media.
Google & Facebook destroyed all except a couple of news organizations. Outside of NYT, WSJ & Co, traditional news media is a shell of its former self. Yes, we all suddenly observed their stupidity for a whole decade as they were dying. But, they too were always stupid. But, stupidity only reveals itself in face of genuine competition.
You are absolutely right. And non-nepo talents (think Gen-Z Tarantino) are finding an outlet in social media. Traditional media just doesn't make money anymore.
The best talents in News Media either went to the few bastions that pay well (NYT), started sub-stacks or became social media influencers.
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