- Viewers have come up with theories surrounding the final scene
- Director Todd Phillips has been heavily criticised for the direction he took the sequel in
- The musical has been a huge box office flop
As should be the case with all monumental box office flops, there are currently plenty of theories abound surrounding Joker: Folie á Deux, many related to director Todd Phillips and his rumoured self-sabotage of the project and what that SPOILER ALERT: pretty barbaric final scene could mean for the future.
So, if you don’t want to know how Folie á Deux ends, it’s probably for the best you stop reading here.
Anyway, that final scene, in which Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, fresh from denouncing the Joker character in court and accepting that he does not have an alter-ego (must to the disgust of Lady Gaga’s Harleen ‘Lee’ Quinzel), meets his demise at the hands (and shiv) of a fellow Arkham Asylum inmate, who proceeds to laugh hysterically while carving a Glasgow Smile into their own face, leaving Arthur to bleed to death.
It is a ruthlessly miserable end to a relentlessly bruising film. It is also one which some online sleuths believe has actually spun out the actual Joker for potential future films. Further to that point, some even believe Phillips killed Fleck to ensure he would never have to do another Joker film, being that it was rumoured he had no desire to direct a sequel to his Academy Award winning 2019 original.
Much like the rest of the film, the ending has, mostly, been met with an industrial amount of derision online, yet the very, very online discourse around it is at least providing some entertainment.
Twitter user (saying ‘X user’ just sounds terrible and also like we’re branding people as ecstacy addicts. Which in some cases, who know, they may be. Not up to us to just presume though, is it? ANYWAY…) Melonballzz said of the ending, “This is about Joker, but our ‘main character’ is not our main character. It is the inspiration for the Joker. The people who looked up to him are now without him, so they will look for someone else. That’s when the other guy comes in. You can see him watching and studying him the whole second movie. You watch the guy become the predator and Arthur becoming the prey instead. Arthur was never meant to be THE Joker.”
Interesting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. Mellon also opines, “Joker 2 ending (SPOILER) was genius. I feel like no one is realizing that Arthur is NOT the real Joker. It’s the guy who stabbed him. If you actually paid attention you’d see him cutting his mouth in the background.”
This theory didn’t carry much weight with one person who replied, “Okay well the movie is called Joker so I think it’s a little weird to only have the joker pop up for a minute and a half at the end of the second movie, but excuse the f**k out of me.”
Phillips actually told Entertainment Weekly, “In some ways, he’s accepted the fact that he’s always been Arthur Fleck; he’s never been this thing that’s been put upon him, this idea that Gotham people put on him, that he represents. He’s an unwitting icon. This thing was placed on him, and he doesn’t want to live as a fake anymore — he wants to be who he is.” Although this admission didn’t fly with one Twitter user, who quote tweeted Variety’s sharing of the quote with a screenshot of the original ending to the 2019 Joker’s script.
Richard Newby of The Hollywood Reporter actually makes the case for the ending being the film’s finest moment. It is a sentiment shared by BigScreenBerkan on Twitter, as well;
The myriad of complaints surrounding the ending are particularly aimed at how bleak the rest of the film also is. Not long before Arthur is given a very half-assed appendectomy, he is also brutally sexually assaulted by a group of sadistic guards in Arkham. A bomb detonated outside the court house where Arthur is on trial also kills several people and turns Harvey Dent into two-face before Gaga’s ‘Lee’ turns her back on the man she once believed was Joker.
In short, the film is just Arthur Fleck being savagely abused around a trial where he admits to brutally murdering six people, being abandoned by the woman he thought was the love of his life and, finally, is murdered himself. The ‘was he ever really The Joker? Was he just the inspiration for the Joker?’ crowd will likely keep the debates raging a while longer though, although it is unlikely this will detract from the seismic financial catastrophe the film has been. With Joker becoming the highest grossing rated R film of all time until this year, earning over a billion dollars, the sequel has somehow turned in a worse opening weekend than Jared Leto’s critically ridiculed Morbius.
Personally, given he’s got more comedic chops than Joaquin Phoenix (no offence, Joaquin), Steve Coogan, who stars in the film as popular TV personality Paddy Meyers, should have been anointed as the proper Joker, just so we could have seen Coogan, in full clown makeup, giving us a big, triumphant Alan Partridge “A-HA!” before the end credits began to roll.
Just a thought, Todd, if you do decide to come back for number three.
