Tim Dillon Says ‘Joker 2’ Might Have Been One Big Prank on the Audience

Fans of Batman’s most beloved arch-nemesis used to think that the sudden sinking of Todd Phillips’ budding Joker franchise was a tragedy, but now we’re starting to believe that it’s actually a comedy — and the audience is the punchline.

By now, Joker: Folie à Deux has been out of most movie theaters’ lineup for at least a week as the highly anticipated October 4th opening immediately sputtered out into historically poor returns, earning the worst second weekend box-office decline in the history of comic book movies. As it turns out, most movie-going audiences aren’t interested in disjointed musicals about mental patients, and the stark tonal shift following the first Oscar-winning Joker movie in 2019 turned off superhero fans and critics alike. After five years of eager anticipation, Joker: Folie à Deux flopped spectacularly as it burned through its staggering $200 million budget like Heath Ledger atop a giant cash stack.

A small part of Joker: Folie à Deux’s nearly quarter-billion-dollar budget went toward casting popular podcaster and stand-up comedian Tim Dillon in the role of an Arkham Asylum guard who asks for the Joker’s autograph, and Dillon has spent the last month since the premiere absolutely trashing the flick that was supposed to be a career stepping stone.

On a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Dillon continued his tirade against the film that wasted three months of his life, suggesting that the real Killing Joke was the Joker franchise destroying its own audience.

The accusation that Joker: Folie à Deux isn't even “hate-watchable” is damning enough, but, later in the same talk, Dillon went on to say that he thinks the movie could have been one big “practical joke” played on the fans of the first Joker film who had expected to see something resembling the 2019 psychological thriller that grossed over $1 billion at the box office. And, to that effect, Dillon may be right — many critics and filmmakers have read Phillips’ startling departure from a proven and effective game plan just to make a jukebox musical with Lady Gaga as a sort of meta commentary on blockbuster sequels, and some believe that Phillips turning the franchise on its head is exactly how the Joker would go about directing his own second installment.

Screwing over his lackeys who committed to his plan without not knowing that the project was supposed to bomb is also a very Joker move, so Dillon and the rest of the cast and the crew may also be the targets of Phillips’ grand jest. 

And here we thought the Joker only wanted to torture Batman.