Todd Phillips comments on the ambiguous conclusion of Joker

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

MAJOR SPOILERS for JOKER. Consider yourself warned. After months of various controversies and teasing interviews, audiences have finally been able to see what all the fuss is about now that JOKER has opened in theaters. The Todd Phillips film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up comedian who is driven insane and becomes the psychopathic criminal mastermind known as the Joker. The film is clearly one which has people talking as it's not exactly the clear-cut origin story you might assume, and Todd Phillips recently spoke with The LA Times to comment on the film's ambiguous conclusion.

There's a tradition of Joker not exactly being truthful regarding his origins in both comics and film, and this is something which JOKER continues. Those who have seen the film know that it plays around with truth and fantasy throughout, most notably when it's revealed that Arthur Fleck's relationship with his neighbour Sophie (Zazie Beetz) is a figment of his deranged imagination. After setting the stage for a clown-fueled crime wave all over Gotham City, Arthur finds himself back in Arkham Asylum where he's being questioned. After laughing to himself, a scene which is intercut with images of Bruce Wayne standing over his murdered parents, Arthur is asked what's so funny, but he tells the psychiatrist that she wouldn't get it. The film then ends with Arthur running down the halls to Frank Sinatra's That's Life, while leaving a trail of bloody footprints in his wake. Clearly, this is not a sane individual, and the case could be made that much of the film, if not all of it, is merely Arthur's delusion. While Phillips isn't about to confirm this theory, he can certainly understand why some would see it that way.

There’s a lot of ways you could look at this movie. You could look at it and go, "This is just one of his multiple-choice stories. None of it happened." I don’t want to say what it is. But a lot of people I’ve shown it to have said, "Oh, I get it — he’s just made up a story. The whole movie is the joke. It’s this thing this guy in Arkham Asylum concocted. He might not even be the Joker."

"Maybe Joaquin’s character inspired the Joker," Phillips said. "You don’t really know. His last line in the movie is, ‘You wouldn’t get it.’ There’s a lot going on in there that’s interesting." Phillips offered up one more interesting tidbit about JOKER's conclusion in regards to Arthur's laugh. Throughout the film, Arthur launches into uncontrollable fits of laughter, but Phillips says that the laugh which the character lets out in the final moments of the film is different from all the rest. "That laugh in that scene is really the only time he laughs genuinely," Phillips said. "There are different laughs in the movie. There is the laugh from Arthur’s affliction and then there is his fake laugh when he’s trying to be ‘one of the people,’ which is my favorite laugh. But at the end, when he’s in the room at Arkham State Hospital, that’s his only genuine laugh in the movie." There are a lot of ways to look at this movie, and I'm sure it's something we'll be discussing for quite some time.

JOKER is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out reviews of the film from our own Paul Shirey and Chris Bumbray as well as let us know what you thought of the film!