So did a Venice premiere, itself a repeat of the original. And that's when history stopped repeating itself: Where "Joker" won the festival's Golden Lion, the sequel received a critical beat-down that echoed all the way to the $40 million-or-less opening weekend.

Joker: Folie à Deux is a movie horrified by its predecessor, horrified by its success, its maddening cowardice to pick a lane, its public misinterpretation forged into perverse celebration of a lunatic with a bone to pick.