Joker 2’s Rotten Tomatoes score drops a day before its release

Send in the clowns – that is, people who allowed themselves to get excited about Joker 2 based on the disturbing result on Rotten Tomatoes.

Let’s not forget that 2019’s Joker also dropped precipitously from its initial acclaim. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and became an Oscar frontrunner… and then more audiences saw it, turning what seemed like an undeniable masterpiece into something much more divisive.

Joker: Folie à Deux also premiered in Venice, but the first word wasn’t as strong, initially scoring 58% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s only 2% off Fresh’s rating, and remember: that doesn’t mean it’s equivalent to a 5.8/10. This means that 58% of critics’ reviews were considered positive overall – that’s still more than half!

But as the hotly anticipated sequel arrives this weekend (October 4), there’s an increasingly common conclusion to be drawn from the announcements: it’s not very good.

Joker 2 now has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 47%and has fallen by 11% over the past month. This data is based on over 90 reviews, so it’s a pretty solid result at this stage.

The sequel takes place immediately after the first film, with Arthur locked up in Arkham awaiting trial. He meets Lee (Lady Gaga, playing a version of Harley Quinn) and chaos ensues.

In our review of Joker 2, we called it “a bitter pill to swallow that will largely be forgotten… while enjoyed in spurts, its musical axis is more damaging, leaving this half-baked idea completely skippable.”

Warner Bros.

Yes, if you didn’t know, Joker 2 is a musical. This sealed its fate as a polarizing sequel, but a quick scan of viewer reactions on X/Twitter may pose bigger problems.

“If you liked the first Joker, you won’t like this sequel. If you didn’t like the first Joker, you’re just going to hate and despise Joker 2,” one user warned, while another called it “a shallow mess… it’s all wasted on a story that is actively designed to turn off Joker fans.”

There are no spoilers here, but its ending is already controversial. “I just saw spoilers for the ending of Joker 2…what the fuck,” one user wrote, while another wrote on Twitter: “So we all saw the same ending of Joker 2 or am I dreaming it?”

Joker 2 hits theaters tomorrow, October 4. Find out if it’s rated for kids, if Joker is connected to the world of Batman, and 10 movies like Joker you can watch before the sequel.