Joker: An Unreliable Character Study and the One Scene That "Ruins" It 

"Spoilers for Joker (2019)" Immediately spoils the ending of Kung Fu Panda.

I still believe Phillips threw the Wayne's murder scene because WB pressure him to have a link to the comics for the general audience.

I agree that the moment Arthur entered Sophie's apartment was the moment that defined the nature of the entire film and how unreliable a narrator Arthur is. I wouldn't go so far as to say the entire film takes place in his head, but literally any scene he experiences could be, and what you choose to see as real determines what kind of story it really is. Did Arthur really go to see Thomas Wayne at the theater using only an improvised bellboy disguise? Seems a little too easy when there's a riot outside. Did Randall really give Arthur that gun? He seemed surprised when Arthur mentioned it later. Did Murray Franklin really invite Arthur onto the show? Even onstage Arthur noticed it felt exactly as he imagined it. Maybe all of it is fake, or hell, maybe half of it is, that alone changes what we think we're seeing. It was a brilliant way to setup the film, leaving the Joker just as ambiguous as he was when we walked in.

At least for me, I interpreted the killing of Thomas Wayne as Joker's revenge fantasy

That final scene simply assures us that yes, this is the same world where Batman exists. Confirms that even tho the previous events are uncertain, they are certainly happening in Batman's Gotham. It doesn't confirm or deny any of the other scenes in the movie, just confirms that whatever DID happen, happened in Gotham...

But that final scene he says he's thinking of a joke and then it cuts back to Bruce standing in the alley and he begins to laugh, which means that entire scene is not from his perspective but from his mind, which begs the question even more of whether it's real or not and it then makes even more sense as to why he says "You get what you deserve" because that's what he already said. This would also tie into the "You wouldn't get it" because she wouldn't understand why that was funny since she didn't know the steps leading up to it AND as established during the Murray show they find it terrible that he would joke about death so him to make a joke to her he knows she wouldn't find it funny because "Humour is subjective".

What if Arthur Fleck "told" the scene of the death of the wayne family, too? Maybe he read about it in the newspaper and thought it would connect to his story.

12:14 i disagree.. because it implied that he is thinking it at the end. which frames the scene as Arthur imagining it. i mean is an interesting interpretation of the scene.. i like it. but i dont think that the unreliable narrator get broken.

What I think is intresting about joker is that nobody knows his past.... maybe not even himself

The scene where the Waynes are murdered kind of took me out of the movie first time I watched it, but upon a rewatch I liked it more. It also may not have happened at all, and Arthur just imagines it in Arkham.

Btw, arguably the two most highly acclaimed works of Brazilian literature (Dom Casmurro / The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas) are both character studies told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator.

*Jack Napier:* _Joker fell into the vats of chemicals that disfigured him and went insane._ *Arthur Fleck:* WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY.

I can feel it I can feel this video blowing up soon _and Society will be stirred_

Hot take: Arthur died in the fridge.

I actually thought that moment in the alley was brilliant, because it folds Joker's story into Batman's origin. And the fact that there was a riot may be the only thing about the film that's concrete. Just my thoughts!

Arthur is unconscious during the Wayne shooting, which is an important detail.

Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo created a comic just called "Joker" that did the character study thing pretty well. The POV character is one of Joker's henchmen, making observations about him. That conceit manages to maintain the ambiguity and the unreliable narrator thing that Joker as a character has built for himself over the past 20 years, but it still manages to elaborate on the psychological workings of a character, as a character study should. I found it to be a creative way of balancing the story they wanted to tell with the legacy of a character built to have an ambiguous history

Maybe the final scene with the Waynes is s different perspective because we all know it happened. It's the only thing that for sure happened. Arthur could have convinced himself that his influence did it, but, if the Joker is supposed to fight Batman, it couldn't be the same guy. He's either lying, or wrong, or has his events out of order. Everything with him is up for debate, everything without him is for sure true.

If the whole film is constructed around Joker's perspective, then why couldn't the death of the Wayne's be a fantasy the Joker is having. Paired with the white room scene at the end where Joker's laughing at the image of Bruce in the ally with his dead parents, it could easily be interpreted as such. In any case, saying it ruins the movie is stupidly hyperbolic when it arguably enhances the unreliable narration.

Just one small thing. It occured to me the other day that they do include a bit of ambiguity even with the alley murder. When it happens, Arthur is passed out on the police car, so it could be taken to mean him literally dreaming it. Especially since 1. Thomas has been on his mind a lot and 2. The car hitting the police car and the second car smashing into them (two crashes, two shots - it's fairly common to incorporate real life sounds into dreams). I don't particularly like this interpretation, or the idea that nothing in the film really happened, but I'm putting it out there anyway.

Is that how Thomas and Martha Wayne were murdered, or is that how Arthur imagined it? Was that what he thought was so funny? There was at least one other scene in which Arthur imagined a sequence of events that took place entirely in his mind; his "appearance" on the Murray Show in the audience before the clip of him bombing at Pogo's actually brought him there. Regardless, it would have remained the one sequence in which key events portrayed on the screen were not from his direct perspective, although technically, most of the riot sequence was not from Arthur's perspective. A shot by shot breakdown would confirm this.

The Wayne's death scene could fit into the film fine when you think about it, at the very end he's talking to a psychiatrist, which suggests what we've seen is the story he told her, it's possible he saw the news of the Wayne's murder and altered his story to make himself an instrumental part of it similar to Silas Greaves in Call of Juarez Gunslinger, he tells stories about historical events and inserts himself into them, from his stories a lot of events in the old West are artificially attributed to him but unlike Joker the people he is telling the story to call him out on his bullshit from time to time in a 4th wall breakin kind of way, if you really really wanna reach you could guess that the story we see is one of the Joker's accounts of his past knowing who batman is and again retroactively inserting himself into the Wayne's murder and thus making himself vital to Batman's origin in a way....fuckin unreliable narrators man

Taking into the fact that the movie is meant to be through Arthur's perspective at all times, the thing I like to consider is that the Wayne murder scene takes place between Joker passing out from the car accident to immediately getting up afterwards. We don't see the Waynes again until the cut to at the final scene. One way to think about it is that the scene of Thomas and Martha being murdered in front of Bruce was entirely in Joker's mind and never actually happened. Considering how much of a grudge Arthur had after his last confrontation with Thomas, it's not impossible to assume this was a sort of fantasy going through his mind after the car accident. I know I can't be the first to think of that theory, but this video has helped me contextualize the idea.

I still don't see him as 'THE' Joker, but they have said in the comics there are up to 3 people who have claimed the name.

It's always easy to have Empathy for someone you like or someone you Agree with, anyone can do that... But the meaningful thing is to have Empathy for someone you don't like or someone you Disagree with. That's why I love series like Dexter and movies like Joker, it forces you to have empathy and understand someone who you don't agree with his actions.

Another scene without Arthur (not sure if it was right before the Wayne killings) was the shot of all the tv screens covering him killing Murray. That scene stuck out to me

I prefer having the Wayne death scene, because it underlines that, on some level, the events of the film did happen. Honestly the "did it really happen" trick is frustrating to me, a way to make people think they're thinking, rather than actually making a statement. With the Wayne scene, the movie becomes an illustration of what it's like to be Joker, rather than a definitive origin.

"Everyone's afraid of you Arthur because you're a freak, no one in this workplace likes you or trusts you or wants to talk to you." "Yeah, everyone at this place hates me. :'(" (Twelve minutes later) "Hey Arthur, why the long face?" "It's nothing, Randall, I was mugged." "Oh no, that's terrible, well I know this is kind of extreme, but it's a dangerous place out there, so be careful with it, but here's my gun, I completely trust you with my firearm because you're my friend, just don't do anything silly with it. Because I won't be held responsible for what you do with this gun, it's not like I'm telling you to bring it into a children's hospital, just remember to employ your common sense" "Thanks Randall." "No problem buddy, now, I'm going to bully Garry, for the sixth time today, while the boss gives you another speech about why everyone hates you, he's short so I hate him, and no one else will stand up for him, not even you, I mean we know you've got that laughing condition but we're not like the majority of people in gotham, we actually understand it's an involuntary tic, it's not your fault, but Gary's shortness is completely and totally his fault, and I will shit on him for the entire movie and no one will help him out and he will be expected to just stand there and take it, he can't even complain about his problems like you do because he's so used to being harangued and harassed and bullied that he doesn't expect anyone else to help him, and god forbid I die a traumatic death because I can imagine it will be made even more traumatic for him."

I think the young Bruce Wayne scene is a way of leaving the door open for a sequel that involves Batman and Joker. Why else would the movie connect Joker to Batman in such a way unless it was a set up for future films.

Fight club has anyone here seen it! It was was so obvious in joker from beginning to end where real and unreal is not blurred.

Thing is, this is my take on why this version of the Joker and his origin story works; Because it's a *version* of the Joker. Caesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill, Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix. They are all very different takes on the same character, and yet they're all equally valid. Sure there may be defining versions at the core of it all (the animated series version comes to mind), but allowing different artists and writers to pen their own distinctly different explorations of the same handful of characters, all without having to worry about continuity, is part of the reason why he and Batman have stayed relevant for years and across different age groups too. It's part of the reason no fan of the Joker was pleased when DC attempted to give him a concrete name and origin, but nobody cared about this film diving head-first into both.

12:06 I think the fact that the camera pans over to the shot of Thomas and Martha Wayne getting mugged, rather then just cutting over to it kind of says that it's still a part of his perception. I think it's fair to say he's either hearing the gunshot and mugging and having his mind fill in the rest while barely conscious or merely fantasizing about it. This take on Joker is way more down to Earth and that comic book level reincorporation of the line "You got what you fucking deserve!" Seems far too intentional, like they're hinting at the idea that The Joker is seeing his influence on people or possibly that he's just reusing a line in his new delusions.

A majority of this video consistently references previous works, while forgetting that TODD PHILIPS DID NOT INTEND FOR THIS TO BE IN ANY CANNON, NOR WAS IT SUPPOSED TO BE IN SYNC WITH COMIC ORIGINS.

MCU villain: give a cosmic titan all the powers of the multiverse. DC villain: show's an ordinary man down on his luck, and take everything away from.

The scene showing the murder of the Waynes was a calculated move; it was MEANT to (fleetingly) break with the way everything had been shown to the viewer up until that point. It was another chance for the film to invert the audience's perceptions of the story's moral standpoints. Since everything had been shown solely from Arthur's point of view until then, the audience had been fed a distinctly unsavory depiction of Thomas Wayne. He's rich, Arthur's poor, and he comes across as kind of a douchebag. However, the scene in which he is killed was an opportunity to flip that perception on its head, as since he is gunned down in cold blood for no reason, and since Arthur isn't even in the scene with him and therefore we aren't seeing it from his perspective, the audience can no longer see events from any other stance than simply an innocent man being murdered. The clown thug's reiteration of Arthur's "You get what you fuckin' deserve!" statement was meant to allow the viewer to see how skewed the morality of the story was. Up until the end, we've seen everything from the perspective of the impoverished; therefore, we sympathize with their plight and we resent Thomas Wayne because of how much of an elitist he is. In the scene where he's killed though, things once again are flipped, as now we see how vicious the poor people can be and we realize that, while they may have legitimate grievances, they most certainly are NOT the heroes of this story, which is a story without heroes. When the clown thug utters Arthur's statement, it's meant to show how easy it is for people to justify murder. Who was he to say that Thomas Wayne deserved to die? Who was Arthur to say that Murray deserved to die? By offering the audience one lone scene shown from a different perspective than Arthur's, the movie was essentially giving them a small window through which to view things from another standpoint. I don't think the scene in which the Waynes are killed is a flaw with the movie; if anything, I think it was actually a good idea.

The “ruined” scene was simply fan service. Don’t put much thought into it lol

I definitely suggest you to play Telltale Season 2 Batman. It has my favourite Joker as of yet and it's one of the most distinct of them all.

To me I think the final scene in the movie when it cuts to a flash back of Bruce standing over his parents represents the jokers influence on how he created an unhinged society or socal movement. Although he wasn't there when it happened he laughs because he knows he responsible for causing such chaos in Gotham and this is his revenge for getting back at a society that treated him so poorly. I think that cut away scene is important to show how he inspired such random and reckless violence which of course ends up creating the Batman.

12:14 - this scene might be what the Joker imagined while being transported by police... or even later in mental hospital.

They should’ve put The Wayne’s death in the background with only a couple of flashes of light to tell us what happened

I absolutely fell in love with Arthur Fleck.

Could you talk about having more than 3 acts in a story? Having six acts is very alluring to me.

100k+ views is a great achievement, but kind of shocked me. This is 1 million+ content.

One more theory to add. We see bruce at the end, his parents killed by not a thug, but by a clown. And a twisted turn of events lead him to become the batman who laughs. A different story from the dark nights metal series, but fun to think of.

I think they put Thomas and Martha's death in the film simply because they had to. It was kind of obligatory to explain what happened if there was truly going to be a Batman in this universe (which without this scene, one could argue Batman is too silly of a concept for this realistic grounded movie)

I'm still convinced the Wayne scene wasn't Todd Phillips' idea. That had to be the studio making him do that

"The Joker's origin has always been a mystery" The Killing Joke: "Am I a joke to you?"

Alternative perspective. The very next scene shows Arthur laughing at a joke in his head. Implying that he’s thinking about the murder of Thomas Wayne. So if that scene is a fantasy it is still from Arthur’s perspective and we have no way of knowing if it actually happened or if it’s just a fantsu

I didn't interpret Joker as being EXCLUSIVELY a delusion or hallucination which takes place in Arthur's head. I certainly thought some of it was, and no, it's not always certain which bits are or aren't; but the shooting of the Waynes is only going to ruin the movie for you, if you assume that literally the entire thing was a hallucination. To me, that removes the uncertainty in the same way that having it all be completely persistent would. I understand why the Joker doesn't want a definite origin story; because if he has one, then he becomes completely quantifiable, and in turn becomes ordinary, predictable, and powerless, which is exactly what he wants to avoid. Having some parts of this film therefore be "real," and some parts not is the source of the uncertainty, and it enhances the finished product. After all, the only way to tell the difference is via contrast, and so without a certain amount of both, it's all one way or all the other.

My theory after watching it for the 5th time is that Joker has Always been there and from the start of the film it shows apparent and inconsistent Shots of his posture or eyes, which represent Joker & Arthur, existing simultaneously within his own mind; Wether he actually says the things he does or not for the first half of the film is generally observed via the response or lack of reaction from the receiving person he is interacting with. Think of this film as the film Split, when patricia gives up the light to Dennis and its dennis whos majority of the time interacting with people in order to protect the others. Also this movie is out of chronological Order. I have discovered that in theory, the ending is actually the beginning and the fact that Arthur was in the Asylum prior to the start of the film, tells me that he was once the JOKER; BUT he recovers through medications etc and is deemed mentally ill, in other words, it is society who suppresses his true self, Arthur is and has always been JOKER. Depending on how much you break the rhythm of the film, you could even say that his interactions with mother all happened prior to the first time he ended up in the asylum. And everything you see from the last half of the film is his relapse from REMEMBERING the Pills suppression of what he had done.

I would argue that 'society in decline' is the antagonist in Joker.

I think the Waynes murder is clearly what Arthur is laughing about at the end talking to the doctor in the asylum, and that's because he just thought of it, the movie shows us that he didn't witness this murder, so there's no way of him knowing it happened by the film's own rules.... It didn't happen at all, actually, but in that moment in the asylum he imagined that that bit of dark poetic justice in his mind actually took place, that he inspired someone to kill the father figure of Thomas Wayne.

I much rather think of the Jokehe thought of at the end was one of Irony and that it all did happen. He found it Ironic that The Wayne's was partially responsible for the events that lead him into becoming The Joker whereas the actions of Arthur led to the creation of the Batman. They are essentially two sides of the same coin. That's what he found hilarious. Not a crack pot made up story. I know a lot of Batman fans or anyone for that matter doesnt like to think of Bruce Wayne's Psyche all that much, but the Dude is insane. A high functioning Mad man repressing his feelings through vigilantism. His entire life started the moment his parents died. He's not entirely rational no matter how intelligent and logical he is. No sane person would dress up as a bat at night and kick ass all night. This Joker and Batman are intertwined by fate from two ends of the class spectrum. Arthur being from the slums of Gotham living with a mental illness using a system that is failing and eventually shuts down altogether whereas Bruce was born of Privaledge and lives outside of Gotham and had everything handed to him on a silver platter and a comfortable home and parents, but most likely suffered from having Alfred raising him instead of his parents. I would also like to think the Arthur we saw at the end of the film is the real Arthur. Not the Arthur hopped up on prescription drugs we saw in the beginning and the reason why he hallucinates his girlfriend is because that'a side effect when you stop taking the drug. After the side effects are gone. That is the real Arthur. The one dancing down the stairs is the real Arthur not on drugs. And if we assume the whole story was being told by Arthur at the end of the movie we can assume what he's saying is true or why would he make up a made up girlfriend? He's telling how he remembers his relapse. Remember he was in the asylum before the movie began and was released for a short time. I think the point of making the Joker an unreliable narrator even if he was telling the truth was the point. The audience is supposed to see him as insane when he knows he's sane and just sick of all the crap and calling it out. Gotham is backwards which is why there are so many criminals. I also think we aren't seeing the events from Arthur's perspective, but rather the audience is supposed to be the social worker listening to Arthur's retelling which could be entirely true, but the preconceived notion of insanity is what makes her/us seem skeptical of it all even though he isnt lying. We just think he is because he's "insane" I also think Arthur knows this. We can also assume the end of the movie was a time skip of atleast a decade. He looks considerably older and is starting to grey and the architecture is a lot different.

Heh, without even realizing what scene you were building to I was like, "What about the murder of Bruce's parents??" I like the movie but I really wish they'd cut that scene out. It just had no reason to exist and took me out of it right mid-climax. I also kinda hate the schizophrenia aspect of the movie - it's not just mixing "character study + unreliable narrator," but also mixing "realistic portrayal of mental illness + whatever Hollywood thinks schizophrenia is." It just doesn't mesh, imo.

I thought the "one scene" was going to be the flashback scene when he realizes his relationship with the neighbor wasn't real. Everyone with a grain of salt in their minds got it when they showed her confused, there was no need for the explicit showing of what went down. It was like a scene in Saw movies when a protagonist suddenly remembers everything and we're shown a flashback of a scene we watched like 20 minutes ago.

That’s not bill finger that’s Steve Ditko

The movie also about the people and the city that were part of what made Arthur turn into the joker. The city's morale was at its breaking point and once the Joker came into the picture, that's when it became the setting that Batman would get himself into. The scene in question still makes sense because it is the sole reflection of how much influence the joker really had at that point instead of that aspect just being in the background before it.

An interesting look at the movie. I watched it in theatres and didn't 'enjoy' it, but I'd recommend seeing it to anyone in a heartbeat. It was a harrowing cinematic experience, and so much deeper than most of the junk that comes out of hollywood today. As for the last scene, I don't remember thinking anything of it, because I was already exhausted by what came before. Read into it what you will. But I'd love to see a Batman story written in a similar style and done so well.

"he moved away from nearly everything from the comics" But he doesn't the story is modified version of Alan Moores "the killing joke and the ending has shit load influence from Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns". he uses wo the most influential comics and two of the most "i read this for the movie" comic books you can get

I have a tiny bit of an idea about the whole Wayne family death scene. Arthur's mental instability shows that he will insert himself into situations that never existed or do exist but instead have him in them. Like the whole scene where he thinks up being on the Murray show at the beginning. He likes to put himself into alternate situations and imagine how it would play out with him behind the wheel. The Murray show exists and during the episode he was watching, I'm sure Murray did his stand up bit but then Arthur implanted himself into the scene and thought up this whole situation that didn't happen. What if it was someone else who killed Murray and in his delusion, he put a spin on it that it was him. What if he is the guy in the clown mask to kill the Waynes. That's the joke she wouldn't get. In many continuities, the killer isn't caught. Who would believe that a guy who superimposes himself onto others would really be the Waynes' killer. That's probably why she looks so bored by his story but interested in possibly his only show of emotion throughout their whole conversation. She knows this isn't his story but someone else's because he calmly talks about how he did all these things and how he realized he was a cracked nut. A key thing to remember is that he only kills people he feels have wronged him. He feels like the Waynes wronged him by denying him the past that he wanted and the future he saw for himself. Thomas Wayne was his lying dad that was embarrassed by him and Martha was clearly the woman calling the shots when it came to keeping him and his mother out. His own mother was inept and caused him to be in this sorry state to begin with. He blames them for how he ended up being a faceless nobody. Bruce ends up with no family and all alone. Arthur (by this time full on Joker persona) thinks that the system will fail Bruce. Who's going to adopt him? His butler? That's crazy! But that's exactly what ends up happening and to him, that's hilarious. It will continue to be hilarious to him because Bruce/Batman is outside of a system that he's trying to fix and doesn't get that he will get nowhere doing it the way he's going about it. Arthur/Joker is the product of the system and all its failures and knows the only way to fix it is to show that it doesn't work. They are opposites and will always be opposites but have the same feelings and goals that are colored in their own light. I don't get why he would kill Murray since Arthur wants attention. Murray puts him on the tv and puts a spotlight on him just like he wanted. He's not upset by the fact that his face is on the tv. It shows that if they actually called him, he'd be excited to go on the show and not once showed in his rehearsal that he'd want to kill Murray. And after the shooting, it pulls away from what looks like a window full of tvs. What's to say that Arthur wasn't walking the streets watching a bunch of tvs in a shop window and that happened but later on during his multiple retellings of 'his' story, he didn't impose himself into the show as the killer of Murray, who the doctor would know isn't him. So the irony/joke of it all is that the most infamous killer, the one who killed the Waynes, could confess and no one would pay any mind to him. That he's both a nobody that no one is looking for and someone everyone is looking for. That he knows a truth that no one else would ever believe...... or maybe I've just thought too much about it and it's nothing of consequence.

One of the things that's neat about the unreliable narrator that's more subtle is the number of bullets during the train scene: Arthur fires a six-shot revolver seven or eight times.

I kinda get the sense that the Waynes scene was studio mandated. Some suit stood up and said "but we gotta show how Bruce's parents die! It's our most iconic scene! So what if we JUST saw it in BvS 3 years ago? Do it again!!"

Sure, Joe Chill killed Bruce's parents, but what man in the right mind brings his family to a place called "Crime Alley" in the middle of a riot?

I actually saw the scene with the Wayne Murder as the beginning of a Domino effect, this is the result of what happened to Arthur and how everyone reacted to his actions

This changed my perspective on the movie. I appreciate the film now.

Love the sound of your voice/mic, it’s crisp, clear & clean alongside your script.

I love the background soundtrack that you included in this video, as well as your analysis of the movie! Keep up the good work!

The age gap between him and Bruce Wayne is enough to know he’s not the real joker. Perhaps the person that inspires Batman’s nemesis down the road.

The Thomas Wayne death scene might be an ode to 1989 Batman. Jack Napier shot Bruce's parents. Did it ever occur to anyone that Fleck might not be the Joker? That's the genius of the movie. They have an out on canon if they choose. They have an out that this isn't his origin story. The true Joker could be a copycat later on

The Joker being the “culprit” of Thomas and Martha Wayne is a reversed story. I mean, we all know that the Joker was “born” after Batman couldn’t save him from falling. And here Batman is “born” by the Joker’s doing. I think this was intentional. Irony I suppose.

"Nothing definitive has ever been written"... Uh, The Killing Joke?

Ok but saying that having an unreliable narrator for a character study for the joker is a unique idea for the movie seems to disregard all the movies that does do exactly that and better (I.e. Taxi Driver, American psycho)

In Joker (2019), the vat of acid is symoblized by the society

Joker and once upon a time in Hollywood are my two favorite movies of 2019. The unfair hatred this movie got for bo reason is always gonna annoy me.

We're never given an exact time -- like many things in the movie -- as to when he's in the sanitarium. If we take the events as actually happening -- that is, at minimum his killing of the guy in the subway, Murray Franklin on TV, and the riots taking place -- then at SOME point, he'd have been captured. Might have been within days, might have been weeks, but at some point, surely the death of the Wayne's made news: GOTHAM MOURNS: WAYNE FAMILY MURDERED IN JOKER RIOTS "In the wake of the broadcasted murder of beloved talk show host Murray Franklin, Gotham benefactor Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha were ruthlessly gunned down in the chaos of the riots. The couple had just left a theater viewing of the Mask of Zorro when they were accosted in the middle of the riots by a clown-masked assailant and were robbed at gunpoint. At some point in the event, the assailant fired the weapon and killed the couple. Their son Bruce Wayne was left unharmed by the assailant who fled the scene and is still at large." Then, the ENTIRE movie is the Joker reliving one of those "multiple choices" that got him into Arkham, up through and including the fact that while he wanted to kill himself, instead his actions caused the riots which in turn took out his revenge on Thomas Wayne. And that is the joke that the therapist "wouldn't get".

FINALLY, I knew i couldn't have been the only one who thinks a Joker origins movie in general is just something that should not be. It's like Todd Philips wanted to make a big movie, but at the same time didn't want to make a joker movie. Oh wait, he has literally admitted that's what happened.

So... A Perspective Study? A Narrator Study?

What if Joker wasn't ever tied to the Joker from the comic books/films? It would have been interesting of they'd cut the Bruce Wayne scene and set it in another city. And called it something else obviously.

The fact that the ONE time the shot moved away from Arthur was when Batman was ‘created’ for me is what made the death scene even more powerful. It tied into the story brilliantly and definitely revealed to us the amazing comic mythos that was more or less concealed in the movie.

*The man who killed the waynes takes off his mask to reveal it was Joker* - this was cut from a version of the script, but can still be seen because at the end when joker tells the psychiatrist "you wouldn't get it" the audience is shown bruce wayne over his parents' corpses, a pov shot like it was the shooter/Joker. also, joker depictions by differentiation: Romero : the prankster :: Nicholson : the gangster :: Ledger : the anarchist :: Leto : the psychopath :: Phoenix : the Comedian :: Hamil : the Joker.

Eh. 1. I feel like it grounds the film. In the Batman and Joker origins, that's the one certain thing we know that happens. The rest of it could be imagined, but not that, because we KNOW that happens. Spoilers: 2. While he's laughing in Arkham at the very end, an image of Bruce standing over his dead parents in full color flashes. That is enough to still make the event itself ambiguous. Keep in mind the actual killing happens while he is unconscious I'm p sure.

I took his laugh to be both neurological and caused by the abuse, that he got his brain neurologically damaged from the abuse. For example, people can get OCD from hitting the head hard (eg a car accident), so why not uncontrolled laughter. And tourettes (also kind of related) have various triggers, so it's perfectly reasonable that the laugh is triggered by stress/discomfort.

Having a scene outside of Arthur's perspective could be interpreted as representing how at that point in the story Arthur's chaos had spread outwards, and it was all happening with or without him, in a way showing he finally won- the whole film he feels invisible, and to get the attention he craves he has to be present and doing something horrible, but by the end of his journey his mere existence impacts the world.

I am writing my bachelor thesis on a novel that has the same type of unreliable character and your commentary really helps me a lot! Great video once again!

I'd like to offer another option for that scene. It's possible that, in a way, it was from the Joker's perspective. We can say Arthur wanted the one killing Thomas to not be him, but a clown that represents him. Killing Tomas himself wouldn't mean anything, because Arthur and Thomas barely knew each other. It'd be more impactful if Arthur convinced the "city" to kill Thomas. It means Arthur succeeded, and for the first time in his life he's important, while Thomas failed in his mission. Thomas was trying to be mayor, so he tried to convince the citizens of Gotham to trust him and pick him. By choosing a random clown to kill him, Arthur proves that Thonas failed, and that Arthur controls the city's trust.

3:31 - 3 ways actually: 1) prankster thief, 2) murderous mafioso, 3) psycho who want's to mess with Batman. All three types already portrayed by actors: 1) Cesar Romero, 2) Jack Nicholson and Jared Leto, 3) Heath Ledger.

If the story is from arthur's POV, why do we see him in the movie and not from his eyes? Yeah i'm waiting for the war.

Here's my thought - Thomas and Martha Wayne are not small names in Gotham. What if joker read it in the papers about it? I don't think scene tells any intimate details that Joker couldn't find from news sources. Also another backing point of the theory of this all being Joker's interpretation - just like Murray, Thomas Wayne also is someone who Joker idolised before; hence "what you deserve" repetition. Again, just my thought..

Awesome insight 👍 Some friends were telling me that the Wayne murder scene was the joke Arthur was thinking about at the end, which would be consistent with his sense of humor. It's interesting that, since the murder scene is omniscient (not from Arthur's unreliable point of view), it should be the most certain to reality. But then the last scene happens where Arthur could be laughing at the idea, making it unclear if it actually happened then and there, or if Arthur was just imagining it all along.

I kinda feel like the Wayne death is just how the Joker imagined it - he wasn't there, but he inserted himself into it with the killer wearing a clown mask and saying "you get what you fucking deserve!"

One thing that strikes me is that The Joker and Batman are often connected to one another. Whether it’s the comics or films, they “complete each other.” I’d say that the reveal of the wayne murders is just another part to the Joker’s story. Their lives are connected through sinister bond

Great video! I would love to hear your thoughts on the movie Ad Astra if you have seen it. I think it's a bit of an underrated gem and I get this feeling that you'd appreciate it as a psychological movie. I'm sure you'll have a lot of interesting things to analyze about the character's journey.

Ruins it for you. It directly involves Arthur because the actions of the killer where inspired by what he did at Murray's show. Not only the killing itself, but the choice of words and Joker stating that indeed he had a problem with Thomas Wayne, who was the trigger of the protests after what he said on television. Actually, it's nearly natural that it happened that way, like a butterfly effect, the final joke that Joker said you wouldn't get.

Showing the Waynes' murder in "Joker" (2019) is okay in spite of the "character study+ unreliable narrator" formula because it's a supervillain's origin and explains how he became Batman's archenemy. It's good business for an auteur to depart from their usual filmmaking style to please the fans when adapting famous stories and characters written by others to film.

I went and saw the movie with a bunch of coworkers. We all enjoyed it. The alley scene was all the part where the movie dipped a little bit. Personally, what I would have done, is show the Waynes walk down the alley, then clownmask follow them. Then have the ambulance smash into the police car, but have gunfire overlayed instead of a car crash sound.

Well.... He's been portrayed in several ways, the well-dressed psycho by Miller, the sullen, scarred mobster by Azarello, the killer comedian by Moore, the looney tactician in the Arkham games.... Each are amazing in their own right.

Awesome that you mentioned "The Man Who Laughs", but I'm surprised you didn't go into more details about it. "Joker" took direct, dark parallels from that story and put it into its own plot. Poor guy who has a condition mistaken for genuine laughter? Check. He works as a clown? Check. He finds out he may have aristocratic connections? Check. He realizes the people and platform he sought attention from just see him as a jester? Check. He calls out the nobles on their corruption in a big climactic monologue? Check. As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of "The Man Who Laughs" (even writing a stage play adaptation of the original Victor Hugo novel), and so seeing "Joker", with all its visual and thematic Easter eggs to the 1928 film was an absolute treat. Gwynplaine, the titular clown, and his story need more love. Props to the creators of "Joker" for obviously doing their homework.

6:31 ..i dont agree with that.. its true that this version of the character is a new origin but it does lean toward the themes of batman the killing joke. 6:41 the "One bad day" idea of the killing joke. that people living in gotham are just at the edge of insanity (im paraphrasing) 9:43 ok, you did address it. i would have mention it on the start, cause for a while it seem like you were ignoring it. .. but still thumbs up on bring it it up

What if that wasn't killing of Bruce Wayne parents, but Arthur parents. And after that he was adopted, and source of his psychosis is death of his parents. And he saw that scene cause in near death moment his whole life is running in front of hes eyes.

Watching this dissection & reading numerous comments only serves to strengthen the sheer ambiguity of the movie. i believe tho that perfect ending (for me at least) would of been to roll the credits seconds after Joker strolls up the camera & says "That's ......." imagine that!