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In 2008’s “The Darkish Knight,” Heath Ledger’s Joker preached that the folks answerable for Gotham Metropolis should not be afraid to “introduce just a little anarchy” into their world. The residents did not that point round, nevertheless it’s a sentiment that Joaquin Phoenix’s sad-sack villain appeared to take to coronary heart for the following iteration of the character, in Todd Phillips’ polarizing 2019 movie “Joker.” Phoenix’s tackle the Clown Prince of Crime is a far cry from something DC followers had seen on display screen earlier than, as Phillips made the film by pulling as a lot from the works of Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese as he did from the superhero comics oeuvre.

With an R-rating, a Venice Movie Competition launch, and the promise of a standalone story, “Joker” arrived on the scene with a veneer of bizarre status for a comic book guide film. It additionally instantly divided followers and audiences, thanks partially to its seemingly bottomless nihilistic depths and, in response to some, the potential to incite actual violence. By the movie’s finish, uncared for, mentally in poor health loner Arthur Fleck had actually launched anarchy to Gotham Metropolis, and the film bows out on an ambiguous, ironic, and decidedly violent be aware. However with a second “Joker” movie within the works, it is price digging into the ending of the primary movie; now that this is not a standalone story anymore, what do Arthur Fleck’s crimes imply for him — and for the way forward for Gotham?

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“Joker” takes place in Gotham Metropolis in an exaggerated model of the ’80s, one through which crime is rampant, the financial system is down, and billionaires like Thomas Wayne rule the world whereas a man like Arthur — who’s mentally unstable and has a incapacity that makes him burst into random suits of laughter — feels uncared for by society. (Learn our evaluation right here.) The movie spends a variety of its display screen time exhibiting us simply how downtrodden Arthur is. He works with social providers however receives little lasting assist for any of his points. He additionally will get fired from his job as a clown after being caught with a gun that he carried for self-defense and is crushed viciously by businessmen working for Thomas Wayne.

Arthur’s life is depressing as hell, nevertheless it takes a flip when he begins to cease enjoying by society’s guidelines and begins to get violent. When he shoots the businessmen, he conjures up a sequence of clown-faced felony imitators, and town breaks into anarchy after cops shoot a protester. Together with his newfound creepy confidence, Arthur terrorizes a younger Bruce Wayne, freaks out a neighbor (Zazie Beetz) he imagined having a relationship with, and kills each a coworker and his in poor health mom (who at one level claimed Thomas Wayne was his actual father).

The climax of “Joker” takes place on a late present the place the host, Murray (Robert De Niro), had beforehand mocked Arthur’s failed try and do standup. After he tells Murray to name him Joker — the identify he’d known as Arthur after seeing his viral standup clip — Phoenix’s character stutters by some jokes through the telecast. His temper shifts partway by the interview, although, and he finally ends up confessing to homicide and killing Murray stay on the air.

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When Arthur kills Murray, he makes his motivations clear. “What do you get once you cross a mentally in poor health loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?” he asks. He solutions the dangerous joke himself: “You get what you f**ing deserve.” As viewers hear the studio viewers clamor to run away, Arthur dances round on set earlier than grabbing the digicam for a goodnight message.

After this, we see Arthur behind a police automobile driving by a metropolis crammed with rioters. Gotham is on hearth whereas folks dance within the streets. When the driving force of the automobile says it is all Arthur’s fault, he responds with satisfaction: “I do know, is not it stunning?” Quickly, rioters crash into the automobile and Arthur finally ends up free. He as soon as once more dances to a tune that is solely in his head, smearing blood on his face within the form of the basic Joker grin whereas audiences who presumably watched the present cheer him on. Elsewhere that evening, a clown mask-wearing felony brutally kills Bruce Wayne’s mother and father in entrance of him. 

The ultimate scene exhibits Arthur clad in white in Arkham Asylum, speaking to an uneasy-looking therapist (April Grace) in an empty room. He laughs whereas the digicam flashes on a shot of orphaned Bruce Wayne, and when the therapist asks what’s humorous, he says, “You would not perceive.” Then, in a meta second, he sings the phrases to Sinatra’s “That is Life” as we hear the tune play. The subsequent shot exhibits Arthur strolling away down the constructing’s hallway, leaving a path of bloody footsteps. On the finish of the corridor, he does just a little shoulder shimmy (all the time dancing, this man), and the ultimate seconds present him working backwards and forwards within the hallway, pursued by orderlies.

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Whereas the nihilistic, city-on-fire ending of “Joker” is fairly easy, its white room epilogue is extra ambiguous. The clearest rationalization for the blood Arthur tracks by the hallway is that he killed the therapist he was talking with (his arms have been free for a cigarette break, in any case) and broke free. The shot of orderlies chasing him within the distance helps this learn, and the open-ended conclusion would go away room for a sequel. Anybody who reads DC comics is aware of the Joker by no means stays locked up eternally, and with an entire metropolis cheering him on, he’d go away the establishment extra assured and murderous than ever.

Some followers have questioned the validity of this ending by claiming that Arthur solely killed individuals who he thought “deserved” to die, however to attempt to ascribe such a transparent ethical sample to a personality like this does not appear useful. He could have killed a few of the Wayne employees in self-defense, however he additionally noticed them as grasping bullies. He perceived his mom as giving him false hope for a greater future after studying her letter about his parentage, and when he discovered that was a lie, he could not stay together with her anymore. His coworker Randall (Glenn Fleshler) did not save him from dropping his job, and Murray made enjoyable of him on TV.

Arthur is fueled by anger and self-pity as a lot as any warped sense of justice, so any variety of issues in regards to the therapist may have set him off. Or, after contemplating the Wayne household’s deaths, he might need determined he would not want a purpose to kill, marking a full transformation into the chaos-fueled villain everyone knows. When the therapist asks if he desires to inform her the joke, the punchline is perhaps extra violent than she thinks.

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There’s additionally the likelihood that a few of the remaining scenes are imagined, hallucinated, or included for metaphorical impact. We all know that Arthur is an unreliable narrator, even to himself, and there is an otherworldly nature to the ultimate scene. Along with his spontaneous musical second, when Arthur walks down the hallway, his toes type good blood stains whereas the remainder of him seems to be clear. “The Finish” title card on display screen seconds later seems to be like that of a basic black-and-white film, making the orderly chase really feel like a slapstick homage. Plus, there is a cheery vivid gentle on the finish of the corridor that is at odds with the movie’s total darkness.

 Arthur may very well be imagining a state of affairs the place he will get the higher hand, enjoying a “joke” on Arkham and Gotham by committing to the bit that’s his homicidal streak. The blood on his toes could also be an emblem of Arthur’s disregard for human life. As a substitute of the standard image of blood on somebody’s arms, the place it could possibly’t be regarded away from, it is underfoot, and he would not hassle to look again.

The imagined scene concept raises the query: was the scene earlier than it imagined, too? The element that the folks of Gotham cheer Arthur on looks as if a robust narrative alternative from Phillips and co-screenwriter Scott Silver, supporting their central character’s concepts about how the damaged world works. But it would not actually make sense in context once we know folks have been afraid of him on Murray’s present simply moments in the past. It is doable that Arthur’s star-making efficiency atop the cop automobile was all in his head, because it appears like an ending he’d write for himself. In keeping with Vulture, some followers posit that much more of the film is perhaps imagined, although these theories do not make a ton of sense.

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In an interview with CinemaBlend’s Reel Mix podcast, Phoenix responded to a concept that Arthur by no means really left Arkham Asylum when he entered it earlier within the movie to steal his mom’s file, which means a lot of the movie’s second half could be the character’s personal demented fantasy. “I do not know what a part of that is actual,” Phoenix admitted. “I do not know the place actuality ends and his fantasies start.”

This concept suits in with the movie’s dream-like presentation. Gotham begins out feeling like a heightened nightmare model of our personal world and ends with the worst-case state of affairs model of what would possibly occur if somebody like Arthur slips by the cracks of the methods meant to assist him. He cannot repair his life, he thinks, however he can create a brand new one, and whether or not or not that new one is actual would possibly simply be inappropriate.

“For me, the enjoyment of this script and folks’s response is how everyone has a special form of feeling about it, and completely different concepts of what it may imply, and what’s actual and what is not,” Phoenix continued. Whereas Phoenix admits he has his personal tackle what elements of Arthur’s story are actual, he sees the viewers’s participation and skill to determine what they assume occurred as considered one of its nice strengths. Author-director Phillips expressed related sentiments in an interview with Leisure Tonight, noting that sooner or later he’ll discuss which theories align together with his personal, however for now he is comfortable to see folks discover the movie’s ambiguity. “I like you can view this film in many various methods,” he informed the outlet, noting that “You do not need to hamper what different folks’s experiences [are with the film.]”

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After all, these interviews could have taken place earlier than Phillips signed on for a follow-up movie, which is due in 2024 and might be known as “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Woman Gaga is ready to star reverse Phoenix within the sequel, whereas Beetz will reprise her position as the lady he had an imagined relationship with, Sophie. The sequel will probably present extra readability on the unique movie’s ending, as Arthur both will or will not be trapped in Arkham Asylum the following time we see him.

If some portion of the movie’s “King of Comedy”-inspired third act is solely unreal, meaning Arthur may very well nonetheless be a no one — or a hated felony — reasonably than the face of Gotham’s anarchic new regime. If it was all actual, Arthur is perhaps in Arkham the place we left him, except he escaped after killing his therapist. Whereas “Joker” had little or no loyalty to comedian guide canon, it is also price noting that the majority variations of this story have traditionally concerned Joker assembly Harley Quinn – the character Gaga is ready to play – when he is institutionalized and he or she’s working as a psychiatrist. Hey, possibly the brand new film can have a twisted meet-cute through which she takes over for his final psychological well being care supplier, conscious that she has a fairly excessive probability of getting killed by her affected person.

There’s additionally the Batman of all of it to take care of. Will the brand new sequel present an older Bruce Wayne who hates the Joker for inflicting the chaos that killed his household? Did that demise scene actually even occur? Solely time will inform, nevertheless it’s price noting that Phillips really reportedly thought of a very completely different Wayne household ending.

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When you will not discover a “Joker” alternate ending obtainable to view on-line, rumors about one persist because of a tidbit shared by filmmaker Kevin Smith on his “Fatman Past” podcast (through CinemaBlend). In a dialogue of the movie, Smith explains that he was informed a couple of proposed unique ending for the film through which Arthur himself is revealed to be the Wayne household’s killer, and Bruce Wayne leads to his crosshairs.

“Initially, the ending within the hospital was completely different,” Smith shared. “He is within the hospital and he laughs, chuckles, and he says, ‘I used to be simply thinkin’ of one thing humorous.'” Within the theatrical model of the movie, a fast flash to the aftermath of the Wayne killing exhibits that he was fascinated about the deaths of Bruce’s mother and father, however there isn’t any implication that he was the person within the clown masks. In keeping with Smith, although, “What was purported to occur was you flashed again to the demise of Thomas and Martha Wayne and it was him killing Thomas and Martha Wayne.”

What’s extra, the model of the top Smith describes seems like it will have one remaining, black-hearted punchline. “And the boy was screaming and crying,” Smith described, “and [Arthur] turned to stroll away and he turned again, shrugged, shot the child. Credit.” Actually, I like the ballsiness of an ending that might hinge on a darkish joke about how little the film cares in regards to the story of Batman, however given how poorly an identical joke about The Illuminati went over in “Physician Unusual within the Multiverse of Insanity,” it is perhaps an excellent factor if the film pulled again from this ending. As a substitute, we received ambiguity. As Sinatra would say, “That is life!”