The original Joker, released in 2019, holds a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 68% with an audience score of 89%—a remarkable 21-point gap that illustrates a fundamental divide in how professional reviewers and general audiences responded to Todd Phillips’ controversial film.
For context, Joker achieved this dual reception despite being positioned as a serious character study of mental illness and social alienation, not a typical comic book spectacle.
The film’s paradoxically strong audience appreciation coupled with more measured critical praise became a defining feature of its reception, and understanding what these scores mean—and what they don’t—requires looking at both the original film and its sequel.
This article examines the Rotten Tomatoes scores for both Joker films, explains what the gap between critical and audience scores reveals about each film, and explores why the 2024 sequel’s reception diverged so dramatically from the original.
- Table of Contents
- What Are Joker's Rotten Tomatoes Scores?
- Understanding the Critics vs. Audience Divide on Rotten Tomatoes
- The 2024 Sequel's Dramatically Different Reception
- Comparing the Two Joker Films on Rotten Tomatoes
- Why the Rotten Tomatoes Scores Dropped So Dramatically
- What Rotten Tomatoes Scores Actually Tell You
- The Franchise's Reception Trajectory and What It Means
- Conclusion
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Table of Contents
- What Are Joker’s Rotten Tomatoes Scores?
- Understanding the Critics vs. Audience Divide on Rotten Tomatoes
- The 2024 Sequel’s Dramatically Different Reception
- Comparing the Two Joker Films on Rotten Tomatoes
- Why the Rotten Tomatoes Scores Dropped So Dramatically
- What Rotten Tomatoes Scores Actually Tell You
- The Franchise’s Reception Trajectory and What It Means
- Conclusion
What Are Joker’s Rotten Tomatoes Scores?
The 2019 joker received a critics score of 68% on rotten Tomatoes, placing it in “fresh” territory—critics believed it was more good than bad, though not universally praised.
The audience score tells a different story entirely: 89%, which represents a strong endorsement from general viewers. This 21-point differential means that while professional critics approached the film with reservations about its themes, execution, or social implications, everyday audiences were significantly more receptive to what Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips created.
The significance of these numbers becomes clearer when you look at the actual distribution. A 68% critics score means roughly two-thirds of professional reviews were positive, but roughly one-third had significant criticisms.
An 89% audience score suggests that roughly 9 out of 10 people who paid to see the film in theaters felt it was worth their time. This gap—often seen in divisive films that spark cultural conversation—suggests Joker resonated with mainstream audiences in ways that didn’t fully translate to critical consensus.
Understanding the Critics vs. Audience Divide on Rotten Tomatoes
The 21-point gap between critics (68%) and audiences (89%) for the original Joker isn’t unusual for films that tackle controversial subject matter or challenge conventional storytelling.
Critics often approach films with different criteria than audiences: they may evaluate craft, originality, thematic coherence, and social responsibility, while audiences prioritize entertainment value, emotional impact, and personal resonance.
However, it’s important to recognize that Rotten Tomatoes scores are aggregates of binary judgments—a critic either gave a “fresh” (positive) or “rotten” (negative) review based on each outlet’s individual scoring system.
One critical limitation of Rotten Tomatoes is that a 68% critics score doesn’t indicate how positive the positive reviews were, nor does an 89% audience score tell you whether audiences found the film brilliant or just acceptable.
The score is purely a percentage of reviewers/voters who rated it favorably versus unfavorably, which means two films with the same score could have very different reception profiles.
For Joker specifically, many critics who rated it fresh still had reservations about glorifying violence or the film’s darker implications, while those who rated it rotten often cited concerns about the film’s thematic content rather than technical execution.
The 2024 Sequel’s Dramatically Different Reception
Joker: Folie à Deux, released in 2024, tells a starkly different story. The sequel received a critics score of just 34% and an audience score of 36%—a far cry from the original’s reception. Both scores represent a drop of roughly 50 percentage points from the 2019 film, which is historically significant in cinema.
A 34% critics score places the sequel in “rotten” territory, indicating that roughly two-thirds of professional critics gave it negative reviews.
The audience score of 36% reflects similar disappointment among general viewers, which is unusual; most films that do poorly with critics still find some audience support, but Joker 2 achieved the dubious distinction of failing with both groups.
This unified rejection from critics and audiences suggests the sequel faced fundamental problems that transcended the usual divide between professional and popular opinion. Whether due to story choices, pacing, casting decisions, or the broader narrative direction, Joker: Folie à Deux simply didn’t resonate with either constituency.
The film’s performance on Rotten Tomatoes stands as a cautionary tale about sequels to beloved originals, particularly when those sequels attempt to expand the scope or shift the tone of what made the first film compelling.
Comparing the Two Joker Films on Rotten Tomatoes
Placing the two films side-by-side reveals a franchise trajectory that few filmmakers would want to replicate. The original Joker opened with a 68% critical reception and 89% audience score, creating a film that most people who saw it enjoyed, even if critics remained somewhat divided.
Fast-forward five years, and the sequel managed to disappoint both constituencies simultaneously: critics dropped their score by 34 percentage points (68% to 34%), while audiences dropped theirs by 53 percentage points (89% to 36%).
This comparison is particularly striking because it suggests the sequel wasn’t just “more of the same”—a concept that audiences typically reject equally. Instead, it appears to have been something that failed on the original film’s own terms.
Where the first Joker sparked cultural conversation and drove people to theaters despite critical mixed reactions, the sequel lost the audience enthusiasm that had elevated the original.
The fact that the critic score dropped more significantly suggests that film professionals recognized problems in the sequel’s execution or vision, while the audience score drop indicates the film failed to deliver on the promise of the original’s premise.
Why the Rotten Tomatoes Scores Dropped So Dramatically
The 50-point decline in audience reception from Joker to Joker: Folie à Deux likely stems from several factors. The original film benefited from being a novel, provocative approach to a superhero character—audiences weren’t expecting a serious, psychologically complex film in that space, and the unexpected shift generated excitement and word-of-mouth.
The sequel, however, had no novelty factor; audiences knew what to expect tonally, and apparently what they received didn’t meet that expectation. Additionally, expanding the Joker narrative to include Lady Gaga’s character and shifting the story’s focus may have diluted what made the original film compelling.
A critical limitation in interpreting these scores is that Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t measure *why* people voted the way they did. It’s possible that some critics and audiences who rated the sequel negatively still respected its ambition, or conversely, that the film had technical virtues that simply couldn’t overcome narrative or tonal missteps.
The unified critical and audience rejection suggests something went wrong at a fundamental level—but the platform doesn’t tell us whether that was character development, plot coherence, thematic clarity, or something else entirely. What’s clear is that lightning didn’t strike twice for this franchise.
What Rotten Tomatoes Scores Actually Tell You
It’s worth pausing to clarify what a Rotten Tomatoes score actually measures, because these numbers can be misinterpreted. A score is fundamentally a percentage of positive versus negative reviews or ratings—nothing more.
A 68% score for the original Joker means that if you randomly selected a critic’s review from the pool, there’s a 68% chance it was positive and a 32% chance it was negative.
This binary nature means that a film receiving all 8/10 reviews and a film receiving a mix of 9/10s and 5/10s could theoretically have the same score.
For practical purposes, audiences using Rotten Tomatoes should treat these scores as directional guidance rather than precise measurement. An 89% audience score for Joker is a strong signal that most people who saw it found it worthwhile; a 36% audience score for the sequel is equally strong evidence that most people who saw it didn’t.
However, neither score tells you whether you personally will like the film, because that depends on your taste, values, and what you’re seeking from cinema. The scores are aggregate data, useful for understanding collective reception but not predictive of individual experience.
The Franchise’s Reception Trajectory and What It Means
The Joker films present a cautionary example of franchise dynamics in modern cinema. The 2019 original succeeded by offering something unexpected within the superhero space—a serious, character-driven exploration that defied genre conventions. It built an audience through word-of-mouth and cultural relevance, despite mixed critical reception.
The 2024 sequel, arriving five years later, faced the impossible task of replicating that novelty while also expanding a story that many felt was complete. Looking forward, the franchise’s Rotten Tomatoes trajectory suggests diminishing returns for further installments, unless there’s a dramatic creative reset.
The 50-point drop in reception indicates that audiences and critics alike have moved on from the initial fascination with this particular vision of the character.
Whether the franchise continues, pivots, or concludes remains to be seen, but the score differential between the two films is a data point that studios will likely reference when making decisions about the property’s future.
Conclusion
The Rotten Tomatoes scores for the Joker films—68% critics and 89% audience for the original, versus 34% and 36% for the sequel—tell a clear story of a franchise that captured lightning in a bottle once and couldn’t repeat the feat.
The original film’s 21-point gap between critics and audiences reflected a divisive but ultimately well-received work that sparked conversation. The sequel’s unified rejection from both groups suggests a more fundamental failure to engage either constituency on the level of the original.
Understanding these scores requires remembering that Rotten Tomatoes measures the proportion of positive versus negative reactions, not the intensity or nuance of those reactions. They’re valuable as aggregate data points but shouldn’t be mistaken for objective quality metrics.
For anyone deciding whether to watch either film, the scores offer useful context: the original Joker is worth watching if you appreciate character studies and psychological narratives, despite critical reservations about its themes; the sequel, based on reception data alone, may not be worth your time unless you’re completing the story out of curiosity.
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