00:00Come on, get happy, get ready for the judgment day.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at homages,
00:09easter eggs, and other small details you might have overlooked
00:11in the sequel to Joker, Folie à Deux.
00:14No joke, there will be spoilers, including that ending.
00:20I want to see the real you.
00:25Number 10. The title's double meaning.
00:27When the sequel's title was announced in June 2022,
00:31those who aren't fluent in French naturally asked how you pronounce Folie à Deux.
00:35For that matter, what does it even mean?
00:37Folie à Deux translates to Madness of Two.
00:40Coined by French psychiatrists Ernest-Charles Laszeg and Jules Falray,
00:44the term refers to a mental illness shared by two people.
00:47Folie à Deux is an actual term. It's this idea of a shared madness.
00:52One might assume that the title concerns Arthur Fleck's relationship
00:56with Harleen Lee Quinzel, as both find themselves under the same delusional spell.
01:00Give the people what they want.
01:02Yet the title could also pertain to the internal war between Arthur and the Joker.
01:07The film explores whether these two are separate entities or one and the same.
01:11Despite being the loneliest man in Gotham, Arthur can never escape his maddening shadow.
01:17When we are in love, sometimes we will do insane things.
01:22Number 9. The Umbrellas of a Clown.
01:24When you think about it,
01:25virtually every musical is about people coping with reality by escaping into fantasy.
01:30In that sense, the decision to make Joker Folie à Deux a jukebox musical
01:34isn't as out there as some might think.
01:36Beyond the soundtrack, the film channels classic musicals through striking visuals.
01:40In one shot, prison guards escort Arthur in the rain.
01:44Their umbrellas are all the same drab color.
01:47But from Arthur's perspective, everything's coming up rainbows.
01:50This is likely a nod to the 1964 French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,
01:55in which every color popped out at the audience.
02:05These particular colors, red, orange, blue, and yellow,
02:08also match Arthur's iconic look from the first film,
02:11suggesting that nothing can rain on Joker's parade.
02:15Number 8. Another Musical Power Couple.
02:18Most of the film's numbers pay tribute to golden age MGM musicals.
02:22Yet one shares more in common with a variety show in the spirit of Sonny and Cher.
02:26Joker and Lee serve as stand-ins for the I Got You Babe singers,
02:30making banter and music together.
02:32Beyond the 60s-70s aesthetic,
02:34Joker and Lee mirror Sonny and Cher's off-screen relationship to an extent.
02:38Okay, so Sonny and Cher were not homicidal clowns.
02:41Behind the scenes though,
02:42their relationship was not as chipper as their on-screen personas implied.
02:46Fool around with me, go ahead. You know what's gonna happen?
02:49Nothing.
02:50Cher recalls Bono being incredibly controlling of their act and her life,
02:54with their marriage ending in divorce.
02:56Likewise, Arthur tries to make the Joker and Harley show all about him,
03:00with Lee eventually pulling the trigger on their breakup.
03:07Number 7. Pepe Le Pew's Folly.
03:10Just when you thought Warner Brothers had kicked Pepe Le Pew to the curb for good,
03:13the Joker pulled the skunk back in.
03:15The Oscar-winning For Sentimental Reasons can be seen playing on TV at Arkham.
03:23Aside from being French,
03:25Pepe's presence parallels Arthur's inevitable downfall.
03:28Akin to Arthur's narcissistic tendencies,
03:31Pepe is in love with himself, blissfully unaware of how others feel about him.
03:35Pepe and Arthur are hopeless romantics,
03:37willing to put a gun to their heads for love.
03:40Romance rarely works out as Pepe envisions, however.
03:43The same goes for Arthur,
03:44whose relationship with Lee crumbles as he realizes life isn't a musical,
03:49or a cartoon for that matter.
03:50In the end, Arthur and Pepe are both losers destined to be alone.
04:00Gotham is among the most well-known cities in popular media.
04:03Like Springfield, though, it's often been left unclear which state Gotham is in.
04:07The DCEU was one of the first incarnations to give Gotham a precise location,
04:12revealing it's in New Jersey.
04:14Several comics have also leaned towards New Jersey being Batman's home state.
04:18With a throwaway line that's easy to miss,
04:20Todd Phillips sets his Gotham just beyond New Jersey's border.
04:24Joker, Follies et Deux revolves around a trial named
04:26The State of New York vs. Arthur Fleck.
04:31Speaking with IGN,
04:32Phillips said the filmmakers contemplated setting this universe in New Jersey.
04:36One reason they went with New York instead is simply because
04:39The State of New Jersey vs. Arthur Fleck, quote, sounded weird.
04:492019's Joker drew heavily from the works of Martin Scorsese,
04:53especially Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy.
04:56Shifting gears to a musical may seem as far away from Scorsese as one can get.
05:00While best known for gritty crime dramas,
05:02Scorsese did direct one musical feature.
05:051977's New York, New York aimed to be Scorsese's love letter
05:09to classic Hollywood musicals.
05:14Like those musicals, Scorsese wanted his film to have an artificial feel,
05:18being shot on sound stages with exaggerated visuals.
05:21The story revolves around a complicated romance
05:24between an aspiring singer and a saxophone player who's a bit of a joker.
05:30Despite the romanticized tone,
05:32reality inevitably sinks in as the souring couple go their separate ways,
05:36just like Arthur and Lee.
05:43Joker Folie a deux marks this continuity's introduction of Harvey Dent,
05:47played by Harry Lottie.
05:51Leading the prosecution against Arthur Fleck,
05:53Gotham's DA isn't surprised by the guilty verdict.
05:56Yet Dent and the rest of the courtroom are caught off guard by an explosion.
06:03With the camera focused on Arthur,
06:05it's hard to make out what happened to everyone else in the aftermath.
06:08In a fleeting moment,
06:09Dent can be briefly spotted on the floor
06:11with one half of his face looking better than the other.
06:14Compared to some past versions,
06:16Dent's wounds honestly don't look that bad.
06:18It's implied though that this will lead to a personality split.
06:22If so, it wouldn't be the first time the Joker inadvertently created Two-Face.
06:33That's all, folks!
06:35The previous film is recapped in an animated opening
06:38helmed by French director Sylvain Chaumet.
06:40In addition to Looney Tunes,
06:42Chaumet references his own The Triplets of Belleville
06:44as Arthur arrives at the Franklin Theater.
06:46Inside, the halls are adorned with posters for classic musicals,
06:50including Sweet Charity, Shall We Dance, and The Bandwagon.
06:53The latter is screened at Arkham later in the film,
06:56with the song That's Entertainment serving as a bleak allegory
06:59for how society turns figures like Arthur into idols.
07:05There's also a poster for Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times,
07:08but it inspired Todd Phillips while developing 2019's Joker.
07:12Throughout the animated sequence,
07:13Arthur finds himself at war with his shadow,
07:16a possible nod to Peter Pan.
07:181993's Mad Love was the first comic to flesh out Harley Quinn's origins,
07:23explaining that she was the Joker's psychologist in Arkham.
07:26Joker manipulates Harley,
07:28who later learns he might have lied about everything he told her during their sessions.
07:32Follie à deux maintains several elements while rearranging a few others.
07:36Namely, Lee may be the one manipulating Arthur this time.
07:40We know that Lee is the one manipulating Arthur,
07:43but we don't know if he's the one manipulating Harley.
07:46When they part ways,
07:47we're left to wonder if Lee ever truly cared for Arthur,
07:50or just the Joker.
07:52For that matter, was she ever pregnant with his child?
07:55Although a different approach to their relationship,
07:57Lee and Arthur still make for a bad romance.
08:05In the film, Lee is the one manipulating Arthur,
08:07but he's also the one manipulating Harley.
08:10Lee is the one manipulating Arthur,
08:11but he's also the one manipulating Harley.
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08:35In the final scene, Arthur is told he has a visitor.
08:38We never learn who, as another inmate stops to tell him a joke.
08:42Disappointed that Arthur denounced his clown persona,
08:44the inmate delivers a potentially fatal punchline.
08:47As Arthur succumbs to his stab wounds,
08:49the inmate carves a smile across his face like Heath Ledger's Joker.
08:55It's left ambiguous whether or not Arthur survives.
08:58Even if Arthur bleeds to death,
09:00the Joker can never die.
09:02The symbol he created is destined to live on.
09:05Maybe it'll be through this inmate.
09:07Maybe it'll be someone else who later clashes with Batman.
09:10In any case, what Arthur started is bound to outlive him.
09:14The joke's on Arthur, but as the saying in song go, that's life.
09:24Is there anything we missed?
09:25What are your thoughts on the film and how it wrapped up?
09:27Let us know in the comments.
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