As we’ve noted more than once, a movie’s CinemaScore — the number produced by the Vegas-based movie marketing industry, which hands out exit polls to movie viewers — is rarely a direct measure of quality. There have been very good, or at least extremely interesting, films (Darren Aronofsky’s). Mother! is a prime example) that absolutely disrupted the benchmark by shocking cineplex goers, and quite a few boring ones that scored the coveted A+. But CinemaScore is a pretty good measure of whether early audience members were angry right after they walked out of the theater, and so it feels somewhat instructive to note that Todd Phillips Joker: Foil A Two just received a rare D grade from the polling board, the lowest grade a comic book adaptation has ever received. (Take that, the box office disaster of 2015 Fantastic Four!)

This hasn’t been a good review weekend for Phillips’ sequel, with critics and fans on rare occasions falling in line to release a collective “Todd, what you doing, man?” to the new movie. The film, starring a returning Joaquin Phoenix and newcomer Lady Gaga, has caught Fleck/flack from all sides for presenting a strangely unenergetic follow-up to the shocking success of the 2019 original. The musical numbers were probably always going to be a sticking point, but more than that it just sounds like Phillips has made a movie that isn’t interested in pleasing the movie. or those who saw merit in its cautionary, Scorsese-lite tale of a society causing its own destruction through widespread neglect of its most vulnerable people, or the people who just wanted to see a clown dancing on the stairs and killing people.

We’ll get a full box office report on Monday, but for now this is what it looks like Foil A Two will come in well below expectations after pulling in just $20 million in previews and Friday night screenings. It is also worth noting that although the subject has generated much controversy, the former joker posted a CinemaScore of B+ at the time, meaning it at least generated excitement among the people inclined to watch it. Not so much this time.