Director Talks “Joker: Folie à Deux” Ending

Warner Bros. Pictures
With “Joker: Folie à Deux” now in cinemas, the film’s ending can be discussed with the appropriate spoiler warnings.

A description of said ending leaked online days ago and caused a huge ruckus, and now that people are actually seeing the film – the discussion has only gotten louder.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR “JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX” AHEAD

In the film, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) has reckoned with his identity and cones to the conclusion the Joker persona was just a fantasy and he was the one who murdered those people. After escaping court following a bomb blast, he tries to reunite with Lee (Lady Gaga) who rejects him as what they had was a ‘fantasy’. The rejected Arthur hands himself in.

In the closing moments, a young inmate (Connor Storrie) approaches Arthur, tells a joke, and says: “You get what you f—ing deserve” before repeatedly stabbing him.

As Arthur dies, said inmate laughs as he carves a Glasgow smile across his face in what appears to be a nod to the version Heath Ledger’s Joker donned in “The Dark Knight”.

The end essentially implies this young man will become the real ‘The Joker’ after Arthur’s actions inspired him and many similar other ‘damaged’ young men.

Director Todd Phillips spoke with IGN about the ending and says it was always intended that Arthur was never the real The Joker:

“The first film is called Joker. It’s not called The Joker, it’s called Joker. And the first film under the script always said ‘An origin story’. Never said THE origin story. It was this idea that maybe this isn’t THE Joker. Maybe this is the inspiration for the Joker.

The big thing with Arthur, Joaquin’s version of Joker, our version of Joker, he’s not a criminal mastermind. It’s one of the things we’ve always said about him, even in the first movie.

If we never made a sequel, it was just like, think what you want about what this guy turns into, but it’s never any version of the Joker that we all grew up on. You know what I mean? That’s just not who Arthur is.

So, it’s kind of this idea of when somebody becomes an icon, and we put things on that person as a group, as a society, as a media, as whatever. We put things on that person that maybe they can’t live up to.”

END SPOILERS

Understandably that ending has drawn a ton of criticism in and of itself and seemingly only exacerbated the criticism of the overall film, with a frequent one being “who is this film for?”.

Going by social media reaction, fans of the first seem to think it’s a big middle finger to them. Musical fans don’t like the music; even the classic ‘arthouse film with a studio budget’ argument doesn’t seem to hold true.

This evening the film got handed a disastrous ‘D’ CinemaScore from exit polls, way down from the B+ of the first and in the territory of recent Russell Crowe film “The Exorcism”. It actually scored worse than both the widely panned “Borderlands” and the divisive “Megalopolis” which both snagged D+ scores, and is the worst score for a major studio comic book movie.

All eyes are on Saturday’s box-office and how much hold the film will have from Friday.