LogFAQs > #972402916

I felt that Joker was a fine one-off character study, and that a sequel is just blatant and unnecessary serialization by greedy Hollywood executives chasing the next big "cinematic universe."

In addition, the ambiguity in Joker was part of the main theme of the film. Did Arthur really kill that woman? Was Thomas Wayne really his dad? Does it even matter? What was real and what was played out in his head was never (and imo, should never) be objectively laid out. It's not a mystery to be solved, it's left to the audiences' interpretation what events they believe really happened in the fiction of the film.

A sequel, done poorly, would inevitably have to address some of those elements and collapse them to a single reality. It's like David Chase telling a reporter that Tony Soprano really dies, 14 years after the series ends. It saps all of the interest and speculation out of the dialogue when you're just told "oh the answer is this."

That being said, with some of the reveals about the direction they're going with this sequel, the studio seems to be making decisions that play off the themes of the first movie. Musicals are unique in that the songs and dances are usually not questioned by the audience or characters of the film. People break out into a number, it either moves the story along or focuses on a specific character's motivations (or just shows off a bunch of women) and then continues to the next scene. So this psuedo-realm created by a musical break could be an interesting mechanic used by the film to create more of that ambiguity.