Highly influential Japanese video game designer Hideo Kojima has defended the much-maligned Joker: Folie a Deux, claiming that it might take years for the film to be fully understood.
The sequel to the Oscar winning 2019 film, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel, was branded “stupid” on release by critics and performed poorly with audiences.
The film is now available on digital release following its box office disappointment and is causing some people to reassess Todd Phillips’ film.
One of them is Hideo Kojima, the creator of the iconic video game series Metal Gear Solid and more recently Death Stranding, which is being adapted into a film by A24, reports Variety.
After watching the film, the 61-year-old took to X/Twitter to share his in-depth thoughts. He started by praising the film’s Looney Tunes-style opening where Joker gets into a fight with his shadow, theorising that this is ultimately the film’s message.
“In the trial that follows, the question of his multiple personality is argued from beginning to end. Is the Joker Arthur? Is the Joker another personality (his shadow)? Who exactly is Arthur?” asked Kojima.
He adds: “In the previous film, Joker, was it really Joker who captivated audiences around the world? Or was it Arthur? This question is constantly raised to Lee and even to the people of Gotham City within the film.”
Clearly fascinated by the film’s themes, Kojima wrote: “Lately, many spin-off films with a focus on the villains have been made. Can villains be superheroes too? Is this question posed on the big screen as a DC movie too avant-garde? Was it the Joker that audiences around the world loved? Was it Arthur? This is where the reviews have diverged.”
Kojima concluded that he believed it could take as long as “20 years” for the film’s reputation to change. He finished by saying: “It may take some time for it to become a true “folie à deux.” But there is no doubt that everyone in the audience loved Joaquin and Gaga in this film.”
Kojima is not the only significant figure to rave about the film. Quentin Tarantino, heaped praise on the divisive comic book sequel, saying of the box office flop: “I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously.”
The Pulp Fiction director, 61, even compared the film to one of his own scripts, saying it was like a version of Natural Born Killers he “would have dreamed of seeing” before it was altered and eventually directed by Oliver Stone.
Speaking on American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast, Tarantino said: “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 in it.”
