Fan Theories Run Amok After New Joker Movie Trailer Drops: Unreliable Narrators, Inverse Relationships?
One of the best parts of being in a nerdy fandom when a highly anticipated movie is announced comes from the collective sense of eagerness and anticipation building up.
“Joker: Folie à Deux,” the 2024 follow-up to the smash-hit 2019 movie “Joker,” is one such movie, and it didn’t take fans very long to pick apart the first official trailer for the film like it’s the Zapruder cut.
WARNING: The following movie trailer contains imagery and themes some viewers may find disturbing.
The 2019 film delved into the origins of Batman’s iconic foe but ditched the standard superhero trappings for something that felt decidedly more gritty.
(The film has often been compared to the 1976 noir thriller “Taxi Driver,” starring Robert De Niro — who’s also in “Joker.”)
While the exact details of the sequel are not known, “Folie à Deux” has given enough clues for fans to start theorizing about what exactly is happening in this sequel to a movie that, in all honesty, could’ve stood on its own without sequel films.
And those theories are running the gamut of logical to insane — which is fitting given the fractured mental state the main character of the movie is in.
The first thing you may have noticed in the above trailer is that Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix, will be getting a new co-star, played by music star Lady Gaga.
While it’s been no secret that Gaga will portray Harley Quinn, often characterized as Joker’s love interest, in the film, the exact nature of that role has largely been kept under wraps — but fans think there are clues in the above trailer.
Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn in #Joker2 🃏 pic.twitter.com/T8dH4BCoBt
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) April 10, 2024
The most interesting theory being bandied on social media is that Joker and Harley Quinn will have an inverse relationship to what’s typically seen in the comics.
In Batman lore, Dr. Harleen Quinzel was a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum who fell madly in love with Joker. In her attempts to both emulate the Joker and follow his passion for chaos, “Harley Quinn” was born.
Fans have begun speculating that in “Folie à Deux,” Quinn is the one manipulating Arthur Fleck (the Joker’s government name in the movies) to make him the Joker again, despite his best efforts to reform.
Another common theory making the rounds on social media is that Harley Quinn will be a figment of Fleck’s imagination — the old “Newhart” trick.
And while it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that a character as mentally disturbed as the Joker might be an unreliable narrator, fans have taken that theory and lifted it to apply to one of the movie’s interesting characteristics.
“Folie à Deux,” while not a full-blown musical, has been described as having strong musical influences, including about 15 songs that are expected to make it into the film.
Given that “Folie à Deux” is a real-world term denoting a shared psychosis or delusion between multiple people, fans have swiftly speculated that all of the musical numbers in the film will be such shared delusions between Quinn and Joker.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” will affirm — or crush — all these fan theories when the movie releases on October 4, 2024.
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