Can international box office and a release in China help save a once-presumed billion dollar blockbuster comic book sequel from major disappointment on opening weekend?

Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga and co-writer-director Todd Phillips bend the architecture of the comic-book origin story toward a musical, not all that tunefully.

Folie à Deux, Phillips’ new musical Joker follow-up, feels like it knows exactly how ready people were to buy into the first film’s dark power fantasy. Folie à Deux remembers the way theatergoers could see Joker ’s Arthur Fleck as a disaffected victim of the system driven to murder by a deeply broken society.