Having stunned the audience with its overwhelming and shocking ending, ‘Joker: It’s been three years since the release of ‘Joker’ in 2019, and director Todd Phillips has finally revealed the climax of ‘Folie à Deux.’ This was a sad climax to the movie, which did not go well with the fans since the movie performed dismally at the box office during the opening weekend.
Arthur Fleck, everyone’s favorite villain, the Joker, died in an unfortunate turn while he was to be killed in a bomb blast during his murder trial. It would also blow up the courtroom and eliminate everyone inside, thereby effectively truncating his testimony.
In the course of the trial, Arthur waived his right to an attorney and argued that the Joker was not an alter ego or an alter ego. He demonstrated the fact of his guilt in all the killings for which he was being prosecuted. He admitted that he had never had a personality other than the Joker, but he had always been the Joker.
In an interview, he described how Phillips had come to understand that the world and Gotham City especially were about as good as it got, which was pretty rotten. However, according to Phillips, Arthur had reached this decision, understanding that only a final, ultimate fire could consume this decay and bring the site to an end.
In turn, Arthur learned that he has to admit what he did and be a true person instead of what he did to lead such a life. He knew that all this much noise, foolishness, fancy dress, or paint would not better the society he was part of. Indeed, at the end of the story, Arthur confesses that he never was the hero that Gotham made him become. Rather, he remained what he was all the time.
Gotham made him an icon or a symbol, but Arthur never wanted to be fake again. That is why, for Phillips, Arthur understood that he did not want to become the incarnation of the rebellion at all. He wished to tell the truth about his race in return for accepting his evil actions.
In Phillips’ view, it would only be when Arthur learns a thing about injustice surrounding him that he transforms. He was moved by that episode where the guards shot a boy in the hospital, and in this, he realized that everything up to this point, putting on the paint and not being the Joker, was actually meaningless. Joker became himself, but at his core, he was Arthur Fleck- he could not continue to be a man, and he did not really exist. Lastly, Arthur dies tragically; thus, the audience gets the main character as the man he was trying to meet: he is to become who he really is without a mask or role required by society.
