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There are, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped, two great tragedies in life: one, not getting what you want – and the other, getting it. It’s an aphorism that will be felt strongly by comic book fans this weekend Joker: Folie à Deux arrives in cinemas. The film – a sequel to the 2019 one jokerthe dour DC Comics adaptation that reimagined Batman’s clown enemy as a violent, frustrated incel in the Travis Bickle mold — feels like a focused attempt to mature the superhero genre. Many comic book fans have been calling for exactly this: a superhero movie to be taken seriously, a gritty, grounded story that just happens to be set in a world of hooded vigilantes. Well, now they have it.

For the past fifteen years, superhero adaptations have been the dominant force in popular cinema. But for all the money they make, for all the cultural oxygen they breathe, there is always a caveat: the refusal, in some critical circles, to regard them as substantial works of art. Martin Scorsese’s comparison of Marvel films to ‘theme parks’ is a comparison that has stuck like tar. The same goes for the ubiquitous “fast food of cinema” analogy. But it is an inferiority complex that is only partially justified. Yes, the genre still has its naysayers. But even before Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in joker won him Best Actor at the Academy Awards, superhero films were hardly left out of the corridors of prestige: as early as 1979 Superman won an Oscar (for visual effects) while The Dark Knightstarring Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning villain, showed that critics were perfectly willing to recognize the artistic merits of a great comic book blockbuster. But still, fans called for pushing the boat out further, for more and more serious films to be made, an object completely impervious to accusations of frivolity. Folie à Deux is this object. It’s believable, understated… and completely boring.

In light of the new film, the original joker now seems like a dry run – a comic book movie that was aesthetically down-to-earth and mature, but ultimately capitulated to the kind of flashy, easy bombast fans would expect. In his third act, joker saw the protagonist, mentally ill party clown Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) shoot and kill a talk show host, kill several other people and cause a riot on live TV. The sequel takes back this bombast, rinses it off and condemns it. It’s a film that reprehensibly resists its own premise, a film about a supervillain that refuses the call for supervillainy.

Most of Folie à Deux concerns Joker’s capture and murder case. We get scenes in the prison yard. Scenes of conversations with his lawyer. Endless micro-insights into Fleck’s psyche. The film is, incongruously, a jukebox musical, but the songs, old show tunes, offer little escape. Aside from a brief (and surprisingly funny) series of courtroom showmanship, Folie à Deux is punishingly understated, an exercise in willful denial. Pop superstar Lady Gaga is brought in as the hugely popular character Harley Quinn, the chaotic lover of Joker (in this film, the slightly less imaginative name Lee Quinzel) – but even she is ultimately unable to give Fleck a super-villainous turn. Near the end of the film, Fleck emerges from the courtroom Folie à Deux for a moment it seems like it’s capitulating to its genre, heading for a spectacular action scene – but no. No one’s coming. This is what director Todd Phillips seems to be saying: That’s what realistic superhero fiction really is.

Folie à Deux with Michael Corleone Godfather Part IIIStringer Bell in season three of The wire – an inveterate criminal who seeks the approval of heterosexual society. But like those men, it finds that approval is hard to come by. By most conventional standards it is original joker was an unequivocal success, breaking the record at the time for the highest-grossing R-rated film (grossing over $1 billion), on top of its Oscar win. Folie à Deuxwith even more creative freedom and a bigger budget (supposedly almost $200 million – in the same ballpark as huge effects-driven blockbusters like Avengers gather) was ready as a triumphant encore. But if predictions and early reactions are anything to go by, the general public won’t be happy about it. Of course, an abundance of negative reviews didn’t help (although The independent labeled it “formally daring”). But this is a film that seems designed to displease, and the audience can smell it in the air, like a gas leak.

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The irony is that if you really commit to the experiment of a serious Joker movie, Phillips has proven exactly why there is no need for it. Arthur Fleck is perhaps more psychologically realistic than Ledger’s electric interpretation of the character The Dark Knightbut it’s not nearly as entertaining to watch – or as artsy. perverse, Folie à Deux succumbs to the same prejudices that comic book fans so despise: the idea that a film has to be ‘artsy’ and ‘adult’ to be taken seriously. By disfiguring the genre into something resembling ‘real art’, Folie à Deux sacrificed the very things that made superhero movies worthwhile in the first place. Who’s laughing now? Absolutely no one.