People asking why this is a musical is missing the point with the directors choices over the film, as its not really a musical (it has a couple of musical moments rather than being a full blown musical), and its not really what went wrong with the film.

In order to understand what went wrong, you have to go back to the success of the first film, and how it made the director have a massive tantrum. A large part of the success of Phoenix’s Joker was people identifying with the portrayal of the character, including the sort of person who thinks Homelander is the hero of the Boys.

Unlike the Boys where the showrunner just doubles down on how much of a shit and how pathetic Homelander is, Phillips decided to reboot the character into what is essentially a alt right grifter who under pressure during the court scenes recants his grift then dies like a bum to the very base that Phillips is attacking.

He is essentially attacking a large portion of the people who enjoyed the first film, but its incredibly ham fisted and overly blunt. The trailers try to hide this because otherwise none of this base would go and see it, so the trailers have been very meh because they have had not much to work from, its a mess due to Phillips lacking the subtlety to deal with this better.

The film has other issues, such as the first half being his version of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and the second half seemingly being the court scenes of a Few Good Men, but thats the crux of the matter, the director having a massive tantrum over people liking a character he thought was completely unlikable and his panic that we would see him blamed for Joker copycat killers.

Lol, they spent a sum equal to nearly the entire budget of the first film on the salaries of the two leads and the director.

“No one could get through to Todd,” says one source directly involved with the film. “And the one thing about genre stuff: If you don’t listen and pay attention to what the fan expectations are, you’re going to fail.”

I haven’t seen this, and I won’t be, but it sounds like there were some very confusing choices made. First and foremost, why the hell was this a musical? The first was not a musical, and the overlap between people who enjoyed the first and musicals is likely small. Secondly, I understand the frustration with fandoms, as they like to removed and moan for the sake of it, but why would you intentionally announce your disdain for them while making a film based on an IP with a large fandom? That’s just asking for this type of reaction. All in all, it sounds like this director was either too busy sniffing his own farts or just really wanted to blow somebody else’s money for an unknown vendetta against DC.

Hot take, the first movie is overrated incel trash masquerading as high art in film making. It should never have done as well as it did and this movie is showing that.

That’s nothing to say about some of the technical aspects of the first film. Was the acting well done, some of it was great yes. Was the cinematography good, yes in many cases it was. But isn’t a good movie? No, a good movie is more than the sum of its parts.

When I asked my friend what he thought of it, his response was that it was so bad it made the first seem worse.

I guess I’m confused. Is there a reason why the director went rogue? If he was that upset about doing this why did they let him? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?