The original Joker from 2019 received widespread critical acclaim on Metacritic, earning recognition as a prestige film within the superhero and crime thriller space. However, the 2024 sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, tells a starkly different story.
- Critic Score Joker: Table of Contents
- How Did the Original Joker Perform on Metacritic?
- Understanding the Sequel's Critical Decline
- What Metacritic Scores Actually Measure
- Comparing the Two Films' Critical Reception
- Why Critics and Audiences Increasingly Diverged on the Sequel
- The Impact of Directorial Choices
- What This Means for Future Comic Book Adaptations
- Conclusion
- You Might Also Like
The sequel earned a Metascore of just 48 from critics and a 36 from audiences, representing one of the most dramatic critical declines in recent cinema. This article explores what happened between these two films, what Metacritic’s scores actually mean, and why critics responded so differently to Todd Phillips’ follow-up project.
The gap between the two Joker films on Metacritic is not a minor disagreement among reviewers—it signals a fundamental shift in how critics perceived the sequel’s artistic vision and execution.
Table of Contents
- How Did the Original Joker Perform on Metacritic?
- Understanding the Sequel’s Critical Decline
- What Metacritic Scores Actually Measure
- Comparing the Two Films’ Critical Reception
- Why Critics and Audiences Increasingly Diverged on the Sequel
- The Impact of Directorial Choices
- What This Means for Future Comic Book Adaptations
- Conclusion
How Did the Original Joker Perform on Metacritic?
The 2019 joker was a rare blockbuster that achieved both critical and audience acclaim.
While the original film wasn’t met with universal perfection, it earned significantly higher critical scores than its sequel, with reviewers praising the film’s psychological depth and the exceptional performance from Joaquin Phoenix. The film demonstrated that character-driven narratives could compete at the highest levels of cinema even within the superhero and comic book space.
Phoenix’s portrayal of Arthur Fleck became the defining element critics highlighted in their reviews. His work was considered transformative—a performance that elevated the material beyond typical comic book fare. This critical respect for the lead performance set expectations extraordinarily high for any potential follow-up project.
Understanding the Sequel’s Critical Decline
Joker: Folie à Deux arrived with the weight of predecessor expectations, but critics found significant reasons to object to Phillips’ direction. The Metascore of 48 places the film squarely in negative territory, with reviewers describing it as “a staggeringly stupid film” and raising particular objections to excessive musical numbers and problematic pacing throughout the runtime.
These weren’t minor quibbles—they were fundamental criticisms of the film’s core creative choices.
The inclusion of musical sequences drew especially sharp criticism, with reviewers questioning whether these elements served the narrative or distracted from it. Unlike successful musical-dramas that integrate songs organically into their storytelling, critics felt the musical numbers in the sequel disrupted the psychological thriller foundation that made the first film compelling.
The pacing issues compounded this problem, leaving many critics feeling the film lost focus and coherence.
What Metacritic Scores Actually Measure
metacritic functions as an aggregator of critical opinion, converting individual reviews into numerical scores that range from 0 to 100.
A Metascore is calculated by assigning weights to reviews from major publications and critics, creating a weighted average rather than a simple mean of all scores combined. This methodology means that reviews from established, influential outlets carry more statistical weight than smaller publications.
The distinction between Metascore (critic aggregates) and user scores (audience ratings) is crucial for interpretation. Joker: Folie à Deux’s gap—48 from critics versus 36 from audiences—suggests that professional critics were actually slightly more generous than general viewers. This isn’t always the pattern.
In many cases, audience scores run higher because casual moviegoers are more forgiving of entertainment value, while professional critics emphasize artistic merit and technical execution more heavily.
Comparing the Two Films’ Critical Reception
The contrast between the original Joker’s reception and Folie à Deux’s is worth examining in detail. The 2019 film resonated with critics partly because it offered something unexpected: a psychological character study disguised as comic book content.
It took seriously the inner life of its protagonist and explored themes of mental illness, social alienation, and societal indifference with apparent sincerity.
Joker: Folie à Deux, by comparison, appeared to abandon much of this psychological grounding in favor of theatrical spectacle. By introducing a love story element and pivoting toward musical expression, the sequel fundamentally altered the franchise’s DNA.
Critics who valued the first film’s committed exploration of psychological darkness saw this shift as a betrayal of what made the original work. For those reviewers, the sequel felt less like a natural evolution and more like an unfocused departure.
Why Critics and Audiences Increasingly Diverged on the Sequel
The 12-point gap between the critic score (48) and audience score (36) for Folie à Deux reveals an interesting dynamic. One might expect professional critics to be harsher than audiences, but here the opposite occurred—audiences were even more negative.
This suggests that general viewers who saw the film were particularly disappointed, perhaps because they had greater emotional investment in the original and held stronger expectations for the sequel.
This divergence also indicates that critics, despite their objections to specific elements, could perhaps appreciate certain technical or artistic ambitions in Phillips’ approach. Audiences, by contrast, seemed to view the film more through an entertainment satisfaction lens, and they found it lacking on that fundamental level as well.
The result is a film that satisfied few people—whether approached from a critical or popular perspective.
The Impact of Directorial Choices
Todd Phillips made bold, specific creative decisions that fundamentally shaped how the sequel would be received. The integration of musical performance into a psychological thriller is not inherently problematic—Sweeney Todd successfully blended dark narrative with musical expression, as did Pennies from Heaven. However, the execution matters enormously.
Critics felt that Phillips’ musical sequences didn’t earn their place narratively and instead disrupted the film’s momentum and emotional coherence.
The decision to make the film a sequel at all, rather than a standalone story, also influenced critical reception. The original Joker worked precisely because it was self-contained, focused entirely on Arthur Fleck’s transformation. By introducing Lady Gaga’s character and structuring the narrative around their relationship and musical collaboration, Phillips distributed the focus.
For critics accustomed to the original’s singular intensity, this broadening felt like dilution rather than expansion.
What This Means for Future Comic Book Adaptations
The Joker films represent an important case study in how franchise thinking can undermine artistic vision. The original succeeded precisely because it wasn’t operating under franchise expectations—it was allowed to be a singular, risky, character-focused film. The sequel inherited massive commercial and critical expectations that may have pushed Phillips toward trying to do too much.
The musical pivot, the expanded ensemble, the theatrical staging—each represented an attempt to build something bigger and different, but collectively they read as scattered and unfocused.
For filmmakers working within comic book properties going forward, the lesson is complicated. Audiences and critics clearly want originality and artistic risk-taking, but only when it serves a coherent artistic vision. Pure spectacle and genre experimentation for their own sake registers as inauthentic and calculated.
The next generation of comic book films will need to learn from both what Joker (2019) did right and what Folie à Deux did wrong.
Conclusion
The question of Joker’s critic score on Metacritic has two distinct answers depending on which film you’re discussing. The original 2019 Joker earned critical respect and high marks for its psychological commitment and exceptional performances.
The 2024 sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, received a significantly lower Metascore of 48, with critics objecting to excessive musical numbers, pacing problems, and a loss of focus compared to its predecessor.
This critical trajectory serves as a reminder that commercial success and artistic ambition don’t automatically translate into critical approval, and that audience expectation plays a significant role in how films are ultimately received.
If you’re interested in understanding critical reception of comic book adaptations, Metacritic remains the most comprehensive aggregator available, though reading individual reviews provides essential context that scores alone cannot convey.
You Might Also Like
- What Is the Metacritic User Score for Joker
- What Is the Critic Score for Parasite on Metacritic
- What Is the Critic Score for Oppenheimer on Metacritic
For more on Critic Score Joker, see the full breakdown above – the critic score joker details cover what most viewers want to know.
