Posted in: Joker, Movies | Tagged: Ending, explained, joke, joker

Bleeding Cool Explains the Ending of the Joker Movie

Published Fri, 11 Oct 2019 08:15:48 -0500

Last updated Mon, 02 Mar 2020 14:40:56 -0600

After watching the Joker movie, starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips, I thought the ending was pretty self-explanatory. But apparently there have been quite a number of 'Ending Explained' articles on other sites and I was asked if I would add another to the masses.

Okay, I'll give it a shot.

The ending to the Joker movie. What gives? Well, director Todd Phillips had a budget signed off by Warner Bros to stick to, totalling around $55 million, which is small change as far as superhero-based movies go, with the last Avengers movies getting close to half a billion dollars each. As a result, the movie had to have an ending, it is around two hours long. If it didn't have an ending, the movie would have just kept going and going, eating up all of Warner Bros reserves, until it would have bankrupted the company, as well as taking all the resources and effort and time the studio had forever. Given that it took over two years to make a film that was two hours long, just imagine how long it would have taken to make a film without and ending, that was still running now? Let alone the commitment from the cast and crew. And considering the viewpoint of the movie was solely from the perspective of Arthur Fleck, that would also have been an impossible burden to place on the Oscar-tipped star Joaquin Phoenix.

There is also the cinemas to consider. They prefer shorter films so they can fit more screenings in per day. Faced with a film without an ending, of an infinite length, they would also have gone out of business, unable to show any more films on that screen, with viewers paying just the once, continuing to feast on popcorn and slurpees, and unable to empty the screening and clean the ensuing mess, until the cinema collapses under its own filth.

Then there's the punters themselves, those who paid good money to see Joker. Some may have given up watching the film by now, but superhero movies attract a hardcore of fans who stay to the very end of the credits, just in case there's an added sound effect or something. A three-hour film without a pee break can be hard, but an infinite length film would test anyone's bladder, especially with all those slurpees mounting up.

It is likely that, in the event of such a film not having an ending, that the cinema would seal the doors, to prevent the stench of rotting popcorn, empty slurpee cups used as urine and faeces receptors, and the sweat of the kind of people who won't leave a film until it is finished that would have built up so far, seeping further. Eventually, the city would have the screen condemned, only unearthed centuries later by archaeologists who would discover the skeletons of the viewing public of Joker – a movie that would still be playing as, as I think we established previously, has no ending.

For all these reasons, and many more I'm sure, I hope that adequately explains the ending of the Joker movie.