Are we seeing the death of auteur cinema?
To nobody’s very great surprise, the much-anticipated, very expensive Joker sequel, the pretentiously entitled Folie à Deux, has flopped, and then some. The original film opened to a staggering $96 million on its opening weekend in 2019, and went on to earn more than a billion dollars worldwide, eventually winning an Oscar for its lead Joaquin Phoenix. It was that rare movie that appealed as much to cineastes and critics as it did to the Saturday-night popcorn crowd. Never mind that its director Todd Phillips ripped off Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver so much that it was virtually actionable; it was heralded as a vital, incendiary piece of cinema. Its sequel has not been.
