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First Joker 2 Footage Finally Delivers What Batman Fans Crave: The Joker Crying In The Rain

Joker: Folie à Deux Warner Bros.
By Jeremy Mathai/

Oh, Joker, you little scamp. The Clown Prince of Crime is always getting into some mischief or other, whether it's dosing Gotham City with debilitating amounts of laughing gas in "Batman: The Animated Series," embarking on a terror campaign straight out of the US military playbook in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight," or starting beef with Common while having "Damaged" tattooed in his forehead in that one fever dream of a movie that we've collectively agreed upon to never mention again. But the supervillain is saving perhaps his most diabolical scheme for last.

At a time when most reasonable people would be thrilled to give Batman's arch nemesis a break from live-action movies for a few years (Zach Galifianakis' Joker in "The Lego Batman Movie" is forever innocent), Warner Bros. decided to double and now triple down on their most marketable bad guy around. Surely everybody remembers where they were when director Todd Phillips upended society as we know it and ushered in the beginning of the end of human civilization with 2019's "Joker," the blatant Martin Scorsese homage that sought to put a grimy, throwback '70s veneer to a comic book character we all assumed we'd known inside and out. But what we didn't count on was Joaquin Phoenix, well, Joaquin Phoenix-ing it up as only he can as Arthur Fleck, the mentally unstable incel who inadvertently started a Gotham City revolution.

It was simply a matter of time before the billion-dollar hit spawned a sequel of its own, and Phillips is certainly bringing the weirdness with "Joker: Folie à Deux," co-starring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn in what's rumored to be a musical. Ahead of the impending release of the first official trailer, we now have a bite-sized amount of footage to whet our appetites. Watch it below!

Joker: Folie à Deux takes a turn

Seinfeld NBC

Talk about burying the lede. I may have neglected to mention that the studio has rethought its entire approach to these "Joker" movies, ditching Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in favor of an homage to the late, great "Seinfeld" actor Peter Crombie. The entire production of "Joker: Folie à Deux" has been done away with at the last minute and, instead of whatever musical antics Todd Phillips had originally been up to, audiences in theaters around the world will instead get reruns of the classic "Seinfeld" episode titled "The Opera." This, of course, was the one where Crombie's mentally unbalanced Joe Davola dresses up as the eponymous clown from "Pagliacci" and terrorizes our favorite sitcom characters ... which is a pretty quintessential Joker move if you think about it.

Okay, so none of that is true and this was basically just an excuse to reference one of my favorite "Seinfeld" moments, but isn't that something the Joker would do? Alright, the reason you're probably here is to get a glimpse of the insanity that "Joker: Folie à Deux" has in store for us, and luckily Warner Bros. is slightly more professional than I am. Check out the brief new footage below, posted by the official "Joker" Twitter account. (Only the Joker would call it "X.")

Yep, that's definitely a prolonged shot of Arthur Fleck crying/laughing in the rain while chained up in a prison yard (presumably Arkham Asylum), stemming from his shenanigans at the end of the first "Joker" movie when he incited a riot and also blew Robert De Niro's brains out on national TV (and inspired one heck of a meme). Stay tuned to /Film for the official trailer drop later today.

"Joker: Folie à Deux" dances into theaters on October 4, 2024.

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