Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck confessed to his crimes during his trial in ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ leaving many viewers displeased. But director Todd Phillips defended the direction he took with the ending in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“He realized that everything is so corrupt, it’s never going to change, and the only way to fix it is to burn it all down,” Phillips explained. “When those guards kill that kid in the (hospital) he realizes that dressing up in makeup, putting on this thing, it’s not changing anything.”
“In some ways, he’s accepted the fact that he’s always been Arthur Fleck, he’s never been this thing that’s been put upon him, this idea that Gotham people put on him, that he represents. He’s an unwitting icon. This thing was placed on him, and he doesn’t want to live as a fake anymore — he wants to be who he is.”
Noting how Lady Gaga’s Lee never actually called him by his name until leaving him on the steps, the director added, “The sad thing is, he’s Arthur, and nobody cares about Arthur. (Lee’s) realizing, ‘I’m on a whole other trip, man, you can’t be what I wanted you to be.’”
Arthur’s choice to take responsibility for the destruction Joker caused rather than embrace that persona caused his followers, including Lee, to abandon him. In the end, a deranged young Arkham inmate killed him and then carved a Glasgow Smile into his own face.
As Entertainment Weekly confirmed, this meant Arthur was never truly the Joker but was the inspiration for the man who would later take on that identity.
Despite the buzz around it, ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ struggled at the box office, bringing in only $20 million by Friday. The original ‘Joker’ opened to $96.2 million in 2019 and went on to earn $1 billion worldwide.
