Warner Bros.
Now that Joker has been out for over a month, director Todd Phillips has become more and more vocal about certain aspects of the film, particularly regarding one of the movie’s most open-ended questions.
Warning: spoilers for Joker will follow.
As the final act of Joker begins, in perhaps the film’s most horrifying moment, the audience realizes that Fleck’s tender moments with his neighbor Sophie were nothing more than delusions as he sits soaking wet in her apartment uninvited.
After Sophie begs Arthur to leave, pleading that her daughter is sleeping in the next room over, the scene cuts to Arthur walking down the hallway back to his apartment, leaving what he may or may not have done to Sophie up to interpretation.
While the moment was one of the film’s biggest open-ended questions, director Todd Phillips has since come out and given a definitive answer to whether or not Arthur murdered his friendly neighbor Sophie.
Phillips highlights the exact sentiment that I had when exiting the theater: up until that point, while Fleck is clearly a murderous psycho, he has only unleashed his rage onto those who have wronged him in the past. Yes, he’s a legitimately insane person, but he’s not yet an omnipotent force of evil that murders innocent bystanders for the sake of enjoyment.
However, if they end up making a Joker 2, that very well may change.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Contact him on Twitter @eric_ital or via email eric@brobible.com