In 2020, Joaquin Phoenix gained an Academy Award for Finest Actor for enjoying Arthur Fleck in Joker.
In 2025, Phoenix was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Actor enjoying the very same position in Joker’s sequel, Folie à Deux.
This feels like a joke. However like just about all the pieces in Folie à Deux, it’s not.
Was Phoenix that a lot better enjoying this identical character within the first film? I don’t assume so. No matter you consider Joker: Folie à Deux — and I used to be actually not an enormous fan — I don’t assume Phoenix was the issue. He was totally dedicated to his position, singing and dancing and usually bringing as a lot tortured humanity and psychological instability as he presumably may to Arthur Fleck.
However the film round him was typically a chore — and it felt at occasions prefer it was intentionally composed to put followers of the unique film on trial. Half the movie was set in a psychological hospital, and half the movie was set in a courtroom, as Gotham Metropolis’s district lawyer tries Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck for his crimes from Joker.
But Folie à Deux wasn’t a compelling character research or a gripping authorized thriller. However, once more, that’s not on Phoenix. He didn’t write the movie. (And actually Girl Gaga was form of good in Joker: Folie à Deux despite its conceptual points, and he or she received nominated for a Razzie for Worst Actress anyway, however that’s one other matter completely.)
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Whereas so far as I can inform this precise circumstance — being nominated for a Razzie for reprising a task that beforehand gained an actor their Oscar — is with out precedent within the historical past of the Oscars and the Razzies, it’s virtually occurred earlier than. One prior actor was nominated for an Oscar and later gained a Razzie for reprising the identical position.
That’s Sylvester Stallone, who earned an Academy Award nomination for Finest Actor for the primary Rocky after which years later gained the Worst Actor Razzie for enjoying Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV. (He was additionally nominated for Worst Actor as Rocky for Rocky V, however that yr he “misplaced” to Andrew Cube Clay from The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.)
What does this all imply? Completely nothing! It’s totally meaningless. Nevertheless it would possibly simply assist you to win at bar trivia some day, so file this away behind your thoughts someplace.
Will Joaquin Phoenix win a Razzie for his beforehand Oscar-winning position? We’ll discover out when the 2025 Razzies are introduced on March 1.
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