Film Theory: Joker Ending Explained (ft. Pitch Meeting) 

Yoos

Totally

*Spoiler alert* Do not read if you have not seen it. Interesting question if Arthur is the Thomas son. Just saw it yesterday. Need to watch it again to solve this mystery. I will have to analyze the Penny hand writing in letters to Thomas and compare it with the hand written "TW" note on the back of the black&white photograph. It will give us some more insight to solve this interesting script twist :)

*noticable agreement*

This was the best supervillain movie ending I’ve ever seen not even close

@Arxx Fury underrated comment right there

Wise words

joey boiii good bit it’s not not clever😂

I-

AYYYYYYE

Lol same

+Xiryzzz I honestly thought he was curb stomping someone outback.

Yeah, he very clearly wasn't killing anyone. There really isn't anything to suggest he did. There was no legs or arms or anything coming out from behind the dumpster and it just sounded and looked like him kicking trash.

Pretty sure he was, I think matpat has actually misunderstood that scene, I interpreted it that he was stomping on the trashbag that he'd thrown his clown outfit into after being fired, as we never saw the outfit again after that.

Same

that was great

Little by little, you were becoming… Tyler Durden

I’m dying 😂😂😂

LOOOOLLL i am a fan of his work and that is basically him in a nutshell \

Tell us more lie stories

Oh wow wow wow………………wow

this whole movie is really just sad

I wonder if he ever did something to the girl... probably not.

@@judgment5090 ??? What ???

@@judgment5090 i dont think so, cuz....alright i got nothing, but it would be pointless for him todo so

@@judgment5090 I remember the next scene is him in his apartment having that realization that they never spent time together, and then you can see police car lights shining through the window. Who knows, the police could be there for him or something unrelated. Creepy though

Mikeology sudden death GO

she was so nice that let her son Win the pillow fight

Shame she lost. It could’ve harmed her health... badly.

Meanwhile he actually just suffocated her while she was asleep

@@dragonk5543 She was not asleep. She was awake and concious when he took the pillow.

Sounds about right as in..true to life

If arthur lost all his empathy why didn't he killed the little guy who is the only one that treated him nicely?

@@tinypuffs1467 Because it’s what you said Gary was the only one who was nicer to author and not everybody to the society author didn’t fully transformed into the joker yet we see his process into the joker.

E‎

He just need weed that kept me from turning out like him.

@@rebeccamatyas691 does not always work plus you being a women you are less prone to violence

Bruce just can't catch a break can he?

Lmao

HELL NAW HE CANT

Honest the God I don't know why I didn't see that scene coming when it happened. But out of all the reimagining of their death this was my favorite because now there's a legitimate reason behind it and one of the biggest superhero and villain rivalries is now reborn.

@@larontezmoore3313 I'm ok with it in relation to this movie, but Joker having a special connection to Batman due to the Wayne murders isn't my thing/jam.

Literally me too, I was so confused when mat said that

Lol Same

Bruh also

That's cus he was just kicking trash

Same

Yeah it really seemed like it was actually Matpat but then screenwriter guy said he’s not Matpat so obviously it can’t be him

Matpat and Ryan crossed the youtubeverse.

This is, if any of that actually happened obviously

Could be really tragic if they do a more empathetic batman than the dark gritty Batman we always get in live action movies. Joker finally gets the kind of person he would have needed in his life back when he was Arthur but it's far far too late. So, Arthur tries to destroy Batman's empathy for him, out of denial, because he simply cannot face someone genuinely trying to help him while he's "lying there dying on the street" after everything he's done and the bridges he's burned. It ruins the self justification he constructed for his actions and would force him to honestly face what he's done, so he runs deeper into it. Joker convinces himself that Batman is awful, he's just pretending not to be.

@@GentlemensClubHolyEdition Yeah, wanted to make this point but nowhere up top to do so. If all of this was fake, then are Bruce Wane's parents really dead? This doesn't reflect batman at all. At least some of the plot points in the movie must have been real or it was just a guy in an asylum making stuff up and the whole "BATMAN" cant actually happen...

How will this tie into the whole DCU? Don't get me wrong, there were defiantly parts of the film that were hallucinations but surly not all of it...

@@user-pb7tp7ns1r What, the question to ask is how would a new batman tie into this lol, and I think it could make for a really interesting story

Good

that’s why it’s so perfect

Thats the reality a lot of people live thru 🥺

I mean... It is drama/tragedy so...

Him killing Murray was pretty great.

I thought my life was a Let's Play. Then I realized it was an Any% Speedrun.😀

More like "I used to think my life was an adventure. But then I realized, it's a survival"

That was good 😂

You mean a try not to commit die

Its_frosty a “try not to commit no oxygen” I would call it

Factss

THAT’S WHAT WAS SO WEIRD!!!

It all makes sense now...

That's what makes it so good

Joker Kills Murray HD Here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tc6jY3TM2R4.html

Tf really

Aitz yup 3 yrs older

Which is why Leto is better suited as a vampire

For reals

What

I agree. I felt like that scene was trying to show Arthur's attempt at being the same as everyone but he's clearly not and thus he laughing at the wrong time and even writing in his journal to "make eye contact" when doing standup

Yahya Al Yeah, I read it as him having some sort of inability to interpret humor so he was taking cues from the people around him and following their lead.

He didn't understand what the people regarded as funny and only laughed at the "jokes" that he thought was funny. I'm surprised that the comedian didn't call him out for ruining his jokes xD

I was convinced this was the case and seeing that part in this video confused me for a moment. I believe as well that the scene with the comedy stand up is real. He is completely detached from everybody else (he did refer to himself as being a mentally-ill loner) and this scene shows that he is not in sync with the rest (society).

I thought the same, because from what I remember, other people were looking at him like "wtf mate?" it was very awkward.

Thats me ( and everyone ) everyday

@@lucas-xf7rc incel found

@@jakemolina7505 realy your going with that? maybe we realy are all just a bunch of clowns

@@timvanrijn8239 yes incels are clowns just like this manifesto called Joker

@@jakemolina7505 hello thomas wayne. dude its not a manifesto. if it where a ''incel manifesto'' whouldnt they focus on the romantic realtionship. instead of the theme that this man need help.

69 likes haha funny number

Thats absolutely hilarious because you meant that literally

@@shaunhalstead5439 great job mate you got the joke

Shaun Halstead Sherlock Holmes I presume?

Lol

@@shaunhalstead5439 (IN DRAX'S VOICE)

AyKay imagining it was his boss I guess

I agree - it was just him angry and venting on trash.

You can see an ancle

He just wants his theory to be true

I agree it's just the garbage

The Joker's past is not really supposed to be known. I think they did something impressive by keeping his past ambiguous while simultaneously exploring it. Thomas Wayne could have easily doctored the documents. Someone with his level of social/political power (and clearly wrapped in so much corruption it's second-nature to him) could easily do this with the intent of stomping out a potential wrinkle in his political career. But on the other hand, he could be telling the truth when he's confronted - trying to get rid of said wrinkle by giving it what it wants in the hopes that'll put an end to all of this. Regardless, it's clear (at least in this "universe") that the Joker and Batman have an important tie to one-another through Thomas Wayne. Whether it's a genetic tie or not doesn't change all of it being fan-service though. :P

The adoption story Thomas Wayne presented seems the least likely, given that in order to adopt a child you would most likely have to pass a psych evaluation. In addition, it's quite rare for a young, unmarried woman, working as a live-in maid to want to adopt a child at that stage in her life. Some of the court documents also stated Penny's boyfriend physically abused her and the child, when Arthur meets Thomas in the bathroom he is immediately met with violence, it's very likely he was the un--named abusive boyfriend.

That means joker and batman are related??

I don't know if it was ever done in the comics, but I find the idea that Batman and Joker might be brothers absolutely brilliant. The scene when Arthur met Bruce was in a way very tense and touching.

@@christianalvarez3471I agree with you that in the 80s especially, she would not have been able to adopt, and that with his money and power, Wayne had her committed and faked adoption papers. I don’t think Wayne was the abusive boyfriend, though. A woman in her position, and mental state after what happened with Wayne, would be a magnet for horrible men.

Right. Need to keep the villain prequels going.

More like kids, no? Cause he looked like a kid.

UGH

Fuck, this is a stolen comment, good one.

Never mind you just copy pastad:)

Actually I just copy pasted my myself among several different videos hahaha

JelloG haha omg sorry

rewatching it takes away the awestruck-ness

Me

Me too though

Lol

@@niceguysfinishlast Watched it a dozen times, didn't change for me.

Also the fact Wayne doesn't have bodyguard

I’d add D.B. Cooper’s air piracy as an example

That's really sad, maybe embracing technology wasn't such a good idea

@a bean r/airplanemotorwhooosh

You not lying mines a waifu furry

MY WAIFU IS REAL !

Such an epic gamer move

That was true

This just makes this movie way more meta.

That's why i love the scene in this movie where Arthur says "I had a bad day"

I like more the longer version: All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.

Except the Joker has never had a good day, only bad days

Its more disturbing then violent when you consentrate on the story and ewery thing

@@m0li you're gonna have to rephrase that last part it made no sense

Ryguy K ok boomer

Im 13 and i saw it and loved it

I watched it with my 4 year old cousin.

its society

Mine too

Don't forget to make sure that there are little to no laws stopping the violent and mentally ill from owning guns.

Graka G nigga what

@@yew2oob954 *cough* in America. *cough*

Kind of ironic considering Ledger’s Joker actually did have a plan, like he planned everything in The Dark Knight.

@@stepkickking9868 other then the bank robbery, he really doesn't have a plan.... only chaos

@@prue5588 he planned everything and was every step of the way. He's a walking paradox, that's the point

@@mzc102908 "Some men just want to watch the world burn." But you're right....

Fair enough

Where's this quote from?

@@chriskadiya3297 It's an African Proverb, it's actually "The child who is not embraced by the village..."

is that a naruto reference?

@@jackchojnacki3818 oh ok thanks man.

@@jackchojnacki3818 I knew I got something wrong in it, cheers mate!

Same here. I wanna watch it again but it freaks me out, lol

The voice crack he does in that scene is amazingly timed.

I love that line

The hard fffffff in FFFUCKKNG DESERVE. 😰😱

@zonald trumpet wrong movie lol

They kind of deserves it in this movie

Next batman movie gonna cover it again. At this point bruce gonna just yeet them himself.

They always die no matter what. That alley draws them in then WHAM! Batman is born.

@@Asset80 Yeah but like, they're Uncle Ben at this point. Why don't the movies ever pull a homecoming and just brush right past that fact? (Aside from Lego Batman and even then that kinda doesn't count.)

I was kinda surprised when this happened but it was pretty cool and made sense too

Ive suspected that it's more likely that the only true sequence could be those breif flashes of a mental institution. The scene at the end and another flash scene with him banging his head on a window. And everything is his fabrication and might just be the reality his head is in at the moment.,

I’m sure there was a Wilson volleyball there at some point too.

I still like to think he blasted Murray on live TV

No, no. It was much wider scaled. The two-in-one bottles also got involved. Soap bars chimes in. Hair brushes eavesdropping. Pretty soon, the whole bathroom was screaming.

@MuffinBean :D lmao 😂

lmao underrated comment

🥁 🐍

you did not lololol

Ohhh, I get it

If only Arthur had said this line in the movie lol 😅🤷🏾‍♂️☠️

Michael Glynn It’s the best movie I’ve seen in years

Ah a man of culture

This theory was focusing too much on the FALSE hallucinations, and not the actual message. I get it, it is plausible to assume the 3rd act was all in Arthur's head. But that is a cheap cop out to why Arthur Fleck did what he did on the Murray Franklin show. The film creators are smart, very smart- they knew when to play the "oh that was just a hallucination card" and when not to. By assuming that the 3rd was a complete hallucination, COMPLETELY demeans the whole story of the POWER of disrespected mental health and the destruction it can cost.

I agree with you it really made you think

Michael Glynn it was pleasantly horrific...and I enjoyed every bit of that ride.

Agreed

Piper Macartney-FIlgate of course, it was heavenly

He can't really hear properly how Arthur stomp the trash(something like cans), does he also hypnosis by this movie?

Yess agreed

- boobooman4 - you can see the legs and feet of the body

what1???

@@TewityPlays joker doesn't have an identity like batman (bruce), superman (clark)... He has multiple backstories and nobody, not even him, knows which is true

Uncle Skint thats just totally deep

It could just be that.

Yu just over thought that tho

Sean Mullins not really. I just gave explanation to my thesis. Kind of how things work

@@uncleskint4861 ironic...

But maybe yes or wait...no.

Definitely, absolutely, probably not. ...Unless...?

It's like resisting to masturbate on no nut november

Yeah, he doesn't have anything to lose, after all

Mat's drawing conclusions on evidence that just isn't there.

I think life made him Jocker he never wanted

@@KanaidBlack The most dangerous man is the one with nothing to lose

KanaidBlack yeah he LITERALLY says that

Electro Spot 🤦‍♂️ dude obviously. That was Bruce

Or he took real events and worked them in his fantasies. So he heard of the riots and Wayne's death and in his mind he put himself as the one who killed the bankers and the the symbol of the riot

But his parents killed by a random robber in most versions. Could it be that he just fantasized about them being killed by a "clown" after hearing about their deaths?

This is what l thought.

@@shinobu3617 no, that's too random. Joker is a real criminal based on the facilities that's hes in.

God I love this quote

Yup this perfectly describes what happened

Reminds me of gengish khan. Everyone turn on him and his family. So he burned everything. Then made laws to make sure that never happened to anyone else.

Maybe Im wrong but also Mansa Musa

Does anyone know from where this qoute is from? I'd like to watch the movie / read the book/ inform myself about the person who said it/ etc.

We don’t know if it’s 100% in his mind or not.

Actually I don’t believe he associates anything with Bruce directly. I believe that the joke was Thomas that interaction he had with Thomas affected him on a deep level and the fact that his actions inadvertently caused the death of Thomas way pretty much wrote him off as a nobody.

Makes perfect sense as the ending saw a sequence with the Wayne's dead and Bruce standing there, the pearls are broken loose and hit the floor and then we see joker wake up on car bonnet surrounded in glass (representing the pearls) Arthur was a boy who was tortured and abused and and his meeting with Bruce earlier had depth. You wouldn't get it!!!

This makes me 🙂

Honestly I don't think joker had anything to do with Thomas' death directly.He was assuming that it could be because of the riot.we never knew.Who cares he isn't even the actual joker

It was a cute moment hardly a howling moment

You mean the only kind co-worker who he didn't kill in his apartment? I think he isn't real though. The little guy is actually Arthur himself - the good conscience of Arthur. This would mean, Arthur kissing the guy's forehead as he hush him out of his house is a metaphor of Arthur kissing his good conscience goodbey.

@@OutdatedLeon no, stop making this darker than what it already is.

OF COURSE

same,, but noo my dad called me out for it

Lute Philips yeah I thought that was kind of a stretch. I just watched it and that scene just seemed like him taking out his rage on inanimate objects like he does a million times in this movie

j mula Oh he's the complete opposite of an idiot. He just made an idiot mistake

It was very clear not stomping on a body .

Hypster Fall As I said. Idiotic mistake

He just overcomplicate himself

He was at a early screening, they probably changed it

@@solideogloria7573 I watched the movie yesterday. He says both things. He says: "You wouldn't get it, its between me and him".

Metalija no he doesn’t

Metalija he does indeed

@@solideogloria7573 של

I think the only part of the ending that's a hallucination, if any, is the police car crashing and everyone praising him like a hero. I think the car most likely drove him straight to prison/the asylum, explaining how he ended up captured. Although, personally, I dont think you need to explain how he ended up in the asylum, it should be assumed that he was eventually found after the riots.

@@markbergin8821 Fake or real, it's up to the audience to decide is what the movie is trying to achieve. Basically it's pointless to debate either fantasy or reality, Joker happened, Bruce's family died. I don't see what's the big deal with debating what is real and what is not. The movie doesn't even give you enough evidences to determine which is real or fake.

I agree

Exactly what I thought. I think...

JiNzX115 facts

That's Hitler

@@clementthangtinkhum7690 Could also be Lenin.

@@krel7160 it can be a lot of people

It worked well in Persona 5

Could be Jesus.

YES . I haven't seen the movie yet..but 100% yes. That's obvious though right

Yup. In that scene he is nervously rehearsing his entrance. Yet when he does come out on the show as full blown Joker, he is incredibly comfortable and confident in himself.

i was thinking that in his mind he was murrEHy and was killing himself, he was like the 2 people at the same time

@_Havu_ That's an interesting observation, but I disagree. Arthur Fleck at the end of the movie and Arthur Fleck at the end, don't seem too different for me. Like, if the Arthur from the beginning time traveled and met the Joker at the end, I don't think he'd be horrified. I feel like he'd be inspired.

I think he was going to kill himself. Atleast he planned to do it. I think thats why he killed the big guy and leave. He was so confident and enjoying his final show. Then he changed his mind when he readed his old joke "I hope my death would make more sense than my life" and he didnt think his death made sense

Good one.

fuck thats good

you might have a good point!

If you were a woman, i'll marry you for this

I agree however I believe that Arthur was killed before the ending in particularly after he kills his mother. This is because after this he is way more confident and he also kills for a reason and accepts himself as being the starter of the joker riots. This is shown when he went to the murray show and changed his mind from killing himself to killing Murray and this would also explain why he admitted to killing the 3 Rich idiots because as I said he accepted being the starter of a revolution but also because he submitted to joker he felt like he had nothing to lose. Which as we can see from the comics and all the other movies with joker, jokers thing he does what he does because he gets a kick out of it and if he dies during the process he doesn’t care.

I think it’s real as he lost all inhibitions at that point, why be nervous when you’re a dead man anyway

Joshua Orsi I think that part is absolutely real. Throughout the conversation with Murray, you can sense Joker’s growing frustration because Murray keeps cracking jokes at his expense. I think Matt had it wrong. It wasn’t at all like Joker’s original fantasy. The whole interview Murray was tearing him down. Joker even goes so far as to use the same line ‘I just want to make people laugh’ which brought him admiration in his original delusion, but Murray’s response was ‘and how is that working for ya?’ You can see Joker get visibly irritated because no one is reacting the way he wants them to. That whole sequence was real. I believe he actually shot Murray. However, I don’t think the sequence with the police car at the end actually happened. I think that was one of his delusions of grandeur. Because in the very next sequence, he’s in Arkham, with no sign of having been in a serious car accident and the psychiatrist’s words are intended to break him out of some sort of daydream. I believe that final sequence WAS that daydream and the *joke* is that Bruce Wayne- a rich kid who had it all that was constantly in the tabloids- was alone in a back alley, whose struggle was invisible to society, while Joker, who was a nobody his entire life (think of his rant on Murray) is now the face of a movement and plastered all over the news. He’s flipped their roles.

@@_monomorph_1411 I'm skeptical if the clown protests are even real

Phantom Prism I think they were, but I don’t think the sequence of him being praised by them was. Throughout the film, you see the papers and stores filled with clown paraphernalia. However, I don’t think the dialogue of the news casters saying “this clown, whoever he is, is being called a hero” was real. I think the clown riots were a result of Thomas Wayne calling the impoverished people clowns on TV. I think Arthur saw his murders on the news, then saw everyone in clown masks and created this false equivalency in his mind that *he* started it, and *he* was the face of this movement. But you’ll notice, when he’s at the rallies, or when he’s on the train running from the detectives, no one really cares about him. They don’t take notice of him. But suddenly in the end they’re praising him. I think the riots were real, but their reaction to Arthur wasn’t. Why would they praise him? They’d see him as just another one of them, just like they did at the rally outside the theatre or on the subway.

I wouldn’t say Arthur deluded himself into thinking he started the protests. It’s not as if people actually know what the clown killer who shot the businessmen on the train looked like, so why would they equate Arthur with the killer just because he was dressed as a clown? Even the police who were interviewing him before thought he was just another member of the rallies.

ecaxtly. What he means is that this scene (right after the hallucination about the Marrey show) exists to give us a hint about reality vs fantasy. So at this moment he was probably hallucinating about brutally murdering his boss, or someone else. And that's exactly how I saw the movie as well.

i thought it looked like a body, you can see the legs sticking out towards the top of the screen from where he is kicking

Eh, I agree that it was just trash, because after he kills someone he dances, there was no dance, just tears and fetal position which lead me to believe he was just lashing out at the thought of losing his job. But hey this is the beautiful thing about an analysis. You see how people see the same thing differently lol

Anthony Rivera I saw what you did. He was lashing out angry that he had to pay for the sign. He wasn’t hallucinating or whatever. Just mad.

@@aMotionless oohhh interesting idea for a pattern!!! But I think he doesn't always dance. I saw it almost a week ago though, so I have to see it again to be sure (in 2 days from now) ^__^ You're so right, great movies are open to different opinions :D

-ˏˋ wyn ˊˎ- I’m the odd man out on this one. I really didn’t like this particular movie lol. It didn’t flow with vibes and there’s nothing relatable that came from it. I’m not really one to root for villains lol. If it were Thanos, Darth Vader, or Negan, then sure I like those dudes since they were confident and had a grasp of badassery.

Alpha Coo probably because you grew up with an easy life. Us ordinary people can sympathise with someone who’s lower class etc.

thats actually why i hated the chris nolan movies overall (obvi 2 was paradoxically good). im here to see a movie where the protagonist is the hero, so why are the villians infinitely more interesting? no balance, poor character craft

I want Darth maul

@@ajohndaeal-asad6731 you just had to be that guy? smh this movie was relatable for alot of people i dont know about you but life fuckin sucks sometimes man. almost everything that happened to him in this movie happens to people on a daily basis

Yea that's what I though also

Yepp

He said he isn’t stomping on a body, he said he was stomping on it as if it was his boss’s body.

@@nich3001 12:37 "the film then cuts to Arthur in the alley aggressively stomping on a body" you are doing the same to the video that the films theorist is doing to the movie D:

Daniel Vidal and what does he say after ? “He’s fantasizing about killing his boss in the moment”

Just like Gamer and Weeb. Your "girlfriend" only character of the story.

That feels familiar

#relatable

Maybe its the same for everyone Maybe all the people you know are a figmant of your imagination Maybe the people who reply to your comments are all fake

i mean i really did for some time only to be disappointed by reality: she doesn't like me and calls me a jerk but im my head (dreams) , she was my girl

Haha I see what you did there

oooooh joker reference (great job)

*Walks away with bloody footprints*

*that's life*

i noticed this

But in the scene where he goes into her apartment for the first real time she knows his name. She says “you’re Arthur fleck from down the hall right”

I mean it was pretty obvious all along

@@JBuns02 I think you're confusing with their last time that they meet, I believe she said that when she saw him sitting on her couch: "you're Arthur Fleck from down the hall right?" Trying to sound more friendly to calm him down as she was sure he was there to hurt her and her daughter... Edit: also when they meet for the first time in the elevator she says nothing but smiling at him and then when the elevator stops she just says "This building sucks"

Tal Lanciano yes but I’m just making the point that she did know his name seeing as that was their first interaction after the elevator scene