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It’s odd that after a bit of a quiet year, DC has released two live-action projects that are in many ways similar but couldn’t be further apart in terms of quality. Joker: Folie à Deux and The Penguin have been released a couple of weeks apart and without a doubt, The Penguin is far and away the better project. It’s worth discussing how the two DC adaptations are alike so you can see how The Penguin is absolutely more worth your time than Joker: Folie à Deux.
More Alike Than You Might Think
Starting with the obvious, both are DC productions that use Batman villains who have previously appeared in a film. Oz (Colin Farrell) from The Penguin appeared in 2022’s The Batman, while Arthur Fleck/The Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) appeared in 2019’s Joker. While they take place in separate universes or timelines, the versions of Gotham in both are similarly grittier than the live-action versions of the city we’ve seen before. They also deal with similar sides of Gotham’s crime, although The Penguin is organized crime to Joker: Folie à Deux’s disorganized crime.
On top of all of that, both projects present their respective villains in a way that is new to those characters in live-action. Phoenix isn’t copying any of the Jokers before him, with a mopier performance, and Farrell isn’t copying Danny DeVito. Instead, the two projects borrow from two juggernauts in their respective mediums. Joker – and by extension Joker: Folie à Deux – borrows from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, while The Penguin borrows from HBO’s The Sopranos.
The funny thing is that David Chase – the creator of The Sopranos – borrowed a lot from other gangster movies like Scorsese’s Goodfellas. So much so that half the cast of that movie appears in the show. It’s odd that even though both The Penguin and Joker: Folie à Deux have so much in common, even what inspired them, they’re quite different. Folie à Deux is a mishmash of ideas that never comes together, whereas The Penguin is a straightforward crime thriller.
Why The Penguin Is Better
The main reason The Penguin is better than Joker: Folie à Deux is simple, it’s more compelling. In The Penguin you’re watching Oz manipulate the people around him to try and weasel his way out of situations, rise up the ranks of Gotham’s seedy underbelly, and more importantly stay alive. On the other hand, Folie à Deux feels aimless. It’s part animated short, part courtroom drama, part rehash of the first movie, and part musical. None of these disjointed parts fit together, which results in an incredibly boring film.
Plus, it’s arguable that The Penguin has better music too, with “9 to 5” being better than any of the songs in Folie à Deux. In fact, The Sopranos inspiration works so well that DC should try borrowing from other HBO shows too. Where’s the GCPD show inspired by The Wire, or a Game of Thrones-inspired Dark Knights of Steel? How about a Clayface series inspired by Barry or a Vicki Vale series inspired by The Newsroom? Well, we can all agree that the GCPD series would have some potential, right?
You can watch The Penguin on HBO and Joker: Folie à Deux in theaters now.
