My pick: start with Joker (2019)
If you are picking one, pick the 2019 film. It stands on its own, it moves with purpose, and Joaquin Phoenix carries almost every frame. Todd Phillips built a tight, uncomfortable character study around Arthur Fleck and never asked the audience to like him. That restraint is the reason it works.
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Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) is the harder sell. It assumes you already care about Arthur, then spends two hours testing whether you still do. I found the ambition interesting and the execution thin. You can skip straight to it, but you will get more out of it after the first film.
Tone and structure
The 2019 movie runs like a slow fuse. Gotham is grimy, the score by Hildur Guðnadóttir sits in your chest, and the story builds toward a single public moment. It borrows heavily from Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, and it does not hide that.
Folie à Deux changes genre mid-franchise. It is part prison story, part courtroom drama, part jukebox musical. Arthur is in Arkham State Hospital, Lee Quinzel enters his life, and the film keeps breaking into standards like "That's Life" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." Some of those numbers land. Many of them stop the plot cold.
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Pacing
The first film is patient but never idle. The second is patient in a way that feels like stalling, especially through the middle act.
Performances
Phoenix is excellent in both, which is the odd part. He gives Arthur more fragility in the sequel, and the performance is more exposed. The problem is what surrounds it. Lady Gaga gets a real character in Lee and then gets underused, often reduced to a reaction shot in a hallway.
In 2019, the supporting cast does quiet work. Robert De Niro's Murray Franklin is a small role that anchors the whole third act. Frances Conroy as Penny Fleck is unsettling in ways the script barely explains. The sequel has more famous faces and fewer memorable scenes.
Reviews and money
The gap is wide. Joker (2019) won the Golden Lion at Venice, took two Academy Awards from eleven nominations, and crossed one billion dollars worldwide on a budget under seventy million. That run was unprecedented for an R-rated film.
Folie à Deux premiered on the Lido five years later to a much colder reception. Critics landed around 32 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and the box office finished near 206 million against a reported budget near 200 million. That is a commercial failure by any measure.
Which one should you pick?
- Pick Joker (2019) if you want a self-contained character piece with a payoff. It is the safer two hours and the better film.
- Pick Folie à Deux if you already love the character and want to see a director take a real swing, even a missed one. Watch 2019 first or the musical numbers will mean nothing.
- Skip both if you want a comic-book movie with momentum and jokes. Neither film is that, and neither pretends to be.
My honest order: 2019 first, then give the sequel a chance on streaming with low expectations. The first film earns its ending. The second one mostly argues with it.