This text incorporates main spoilers for Joker: Folie À Deux.
Joker director Todd Phillips has opened up about Folie À Deux’s shock ending.
The brand new sequel stars Joaquin Phoenix and Girl Gaga, taking viewers on a two-hour journey that’s half jukebox musical, half gritty jail film, half courtroom drama and half dystopian political satire.
In spite of everything of that, the movie ends on a surprising notice with Joaquin’s Arthur Fleck being killed by a fellow affected person, credited merely as Younger Inmate in Arkham, who tells him a nonsensical joke earlier than stabbing him repeatedly within the abdomen.
This unidentified affected person, performed by Connor Storrie, then goes on to mutilate his personal face whereas laughing off display, suggesting that he’s truly the Joker character identified within the Batman comics, as a substitute of Arthur, as had beforehand been assumed.
Throughout an interview with IGN, Todd confirmed this idea to be the case, revealing the scene was partly impressed by one main criticism of the primary Joker movie during which Joaquin encounters Bruce Wayne as a younger boy.
“One of many issues that individuals by no means understood in regards to the first film was, ‘I don’t get it. He visits Bruce Wayne and he’s 30 years older than Bruce Wayne. What sort of geriatric Joker goes to struggle sooner or later?’,” the filmmaker stated.
“I don’t know when you’ve ever seen the script of the primary film. The primary movie known as Joker. It’s not known as The Joker, it’s known as Joker.”
Todd continued: “The primary movie beneath the script all the time stated ‘An origin story’. It by no means stated the origin story. It was this concept that possibly this isn’t the Joker. Perhaps that is the inspiration for the Joker.
“So, in essence on the finish of this film, the factor you’re being left with is ‘Wait, what’s that factor taking place behind him? Is that the man?’.”
In the meantime, Todd additionally confirmed to Leisure Weekly {that a} scene in the direction of the top of the movie during which Harvey Dent’s face is disfigured within the courtroom bombing is meant as a brand new origin story for the Batman villain Two Face.
“All we’re doing is saying, let’s use this lore as a basis, however run it by means of a sensible lens, or at the very least a distinct lens than it’s been run by means of in different issues, to make it our personal,” he stated, claiming that Business actor Harry Lawtey is “enjoying the character earlier than that character” in Folie À Deux.
Joker: Folie À Deux is in cinemas now.