“A big, giant mess”: Why Quentin Tarantino loved the box office flop ‘Joker – Folie à Deux’
If anyone knows a thing or two about controversy, it’s Quentin Tarantino. When the filmmaker released his debut feature, Reservoir Dogs, he polarised critics, with even the legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven walking out of the screening because of the ear-cutting scene.
In the years following his debut – which established him as one of the most interesting and necessary new voices in cinema – he found a dedicated following of fans who loved his unique style and homage to other genres and filmmakers. Yet, with each film, from Pulp Fiction to Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino has found himself in the firing line – often for good reason.
From his liberal use of offensive language within his movies, especially racial slurs, to his depiction of women (even further complicated by Uma Thurman’s stories of Tarantino’s poor treatment of her on the set of Kill Bill), the director is derided by many. He is well aware of this, but he never seems to compromise his vision regardless of what people might think of his artistic choices.
The filmmaker seems naturally drawn to divisive films, much like his own, sometimes revealing his love for a movie you wouldn’t expect. Tarantino is not afraid to be the odd one out, and he’ll staunchly stand by an opinion even if no one seems to agree with him. This is certainly the case for a recent movie he seems to be in the minority for loving.
On an episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino shared his adoration for Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux. The movie, released in 2024 to rather negative reviews, was the sequel to the Oscar-winning Joker. This time, however, the film used musical numbers that fans seemingly did not want, and it walked away with several nominations from the Razzies instead of any prestigious accolades.
Tarantino thought the movie was great, though. “I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking. 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,” he explained.
“And I’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie. That’s like a big, giant mess to some degree,” he continued. “And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up into it. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were.”
Tarantino also believed that Natural Born Killers, which he wrote back in the early 1990s, inspired the film, which impressed him. “That’s the Natural Born Killers I would have dreamed of seeing, as the guy who created Mickey and Mallory. I loved what they did with it. I loved the direction he took. I mean, the whole movie was the fever dream of Mickey Knox,” he added.
He’s known to enjoy a bad movie, but when he’s adamant that it’s inspired by one of his own? Even better.
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