Joker is a movie that has taken both the box office and social media by storm, with the disturbing story of Arthur Fleck garnering mixed viewpoints among fans. While some of what he does is understandable, Fleck ends up crossing line after line and, by the time the credits roll at the end, he’s a very different man from what he started the blockbuster as.
With that in mind we now take a look at the 10 worst things Arthur does throughout the movie to turn him not just into a bad person, but Gotham City’s feared Clown Prince of Crime.
Bringing A Gun Into A Hospital
While Arthur Fleck isn’t a villain at the start of the movie, what’s made clear is that he suffers from mental illness. That means people pick on him and when a colleague named Randall gives him a gun because he’s his “boy” and he needs to “protect himself.” Arthur decides to take him up on the offer.
What Randall didn’t think would happen, however, was that Joker would bring the gun into a children’s hospital. It’s cringe-worthy stuff as it rolls down his leg and onto the floor while extremely ill children watch. It’s a decision that costs Arthur his beloved job as a clown and gives him even less reason to embrace the good things in life.
Killing The Third Wall Street Guy
Besides acting a bit strange, people tend to pick on Arthur Fleck because of his laugh. The character suffers from a condition that means he’s unable to prevent bursting into laughter in even the most awkward situations and, as you’d expect, he gets a fair bit of attention whenever this happens.
To his horror, his conditions rears its head during a trip on the subway, where three Wall Street guys round on him and attempt to beat him to a pulp. Using the gun acquired from Randall, Arthur kills the first two men in self-defense. The last he could have allowed to live, however, yet he instead chooses to chase the man down and put five bullets in him. This is where we go from feeling sorry for him to seeing him as the psychopath he is.
Breaking Into Sophie’s Apartment
Audiences are tricked into believing Arthur Fleck is in a relationship with Zazie Beetz’s Sophie Dumond. We see clips of them on a date, footage of her watching his stand up comedy, moments of them eating food at a diner and even a brief video where she appears to be consoling him when his mother suffers a stroke.
But all this ends up being in his head and Arthur breaks into Sophie’s apartment. He cuts a terrifying figure and he quotes the Joker from the comics when he says “I’ve had a bad day.” It’s unclear whether or not he kills her and her young child but given we see sirens flashing outside in the following scene, it’s likely that he killed her.
Creeping Out Bruce Wayne
When Arthur is told by his mother, Penny Fleck, that he’s related to Thomas Wayne, he takes her words at face value. In order to discover whether or not this is true, he takes a trip to Wayne Manor and meets Bruce Wayne for the first time on the other side of a well-polished metallic gate.
While Fleck doesn’t do anything particularly bad, he’s creepy throughout the showdown. He lifts Bruce’s mouth into a twisted smile in a similar way he does when putting his clown make-up on in his dressing room at the start of the movie. Touching kids you don’t know and playing with their face? That’s definitely odd and it’s no wonder Alfred Pennyworth tries to defend Bruce…
Strangling Alfred
Arthur expects Alfred Pennyworth, being British and all, to invite him in for a nice cup of tea where he can talk about both Thomas Wayne and his relationship with his mother. He’s left crushed, however, when the butler labels his mother as ‘crazy’ and insists she made the whole thing up due to issues with her own mental state.
Joker doesn’t like this one bit and grabs Wayne’s confidant by the tie before proceeding to strangle him while a dumbstruck Bruce looks on. He stops short of killing him but flees from the scene. While not murdering is a positive, strangling the guy for doing his job is just plain wrong.
Killing His Mother
In order to verify both Thomas Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth’s version of his backstory, Arthur travels to Arkham State Hospital and steals some paperwork that reveal he was actually adopted. Worse, he finds out that Penny Fleck allowed one her boyfriends to abuse him.
Knowing he can’t trust a word his mother says, Joker decides to kill her. The scene is harrowing as he calmly places a pillow over her face, applying pressure in order to suffocate her. Arthur gets away with it, too, with it presumed that doctors believed she died as a result of her stroke rather than anything much more sinister.
Killing Randall
Arthur Fleck doesn’t display any more signs of wanting to get revenge on people but, when the opportunity arises, he sure as hell takes it. One such moment is when Randall (the same Randall who gave him a gun and lied about it) visits his apartment with dwarf David by his side.
Randall sounds genuinely sympathetic towards Arthur at first, before it’s discovered it’s merely a ruse and that he paid the visit to learn what the police know about his firearm. Joker doesn’t flinch as he drives a pair of scissors into his former boss’ eye and proceeds to repeatedly slam his head again a wall before he bleeds out. To his credit, Arthur allows David escape in one of the only (darkly) funny scenes of the whole movie.
Dancing At Violence
Arthur Fleck’s crimes begin to catch up on him and two GCPD officers try to apprehend him during an action-packed chase scene. All three men make it onto a subway carriage but Arthur accidentally starts a melee. The police then find themselves unable to escape as clowns from all directions start grabbing them and beating them to a pulp.
What’s truly chilling here is what Joker does throughout it. As the men lie there, one of them turns their head in his direction and is horrified to see Joker dancing off with a big, villainous smile on his face. Yikes.
Killing Murray Franklin
Arthur Fleck finally gets his chance to be on the Murray Franklin show when a video of his dire standup gets mocked by Robert De Niro’s character. Initially, all signs point to Joaquin Phoenix’s character offing himself on live television to make a grand statement about mental illness and society, with Arthur even putting a gun to his head by a way of practice.
But as Murray is horrified to the revelation that Arthur killed the three Wall Street guys earlier in the movie, Joker has a change of heart. He instead ruthlessly murders the talk show host on live television and proceeds to address the citizens of Gotham, whipping them into a rebellious frenzy as a direct result.
Laughing At Murder
There are so many theories about the ending of Joker that it’s tough to know where to start. Was it all in his own head or did it happen and Arthur Fleck is merely incarcerated by the end of the movie? Well, one thing we can agree on at least is just how every it is when Joaquin Phoenix gives his final laugh of the movie.
It happens just as images of a now orphaned Bruce Wayne standing in Crime Alley flash through Arthur’s head. It’s enough to prompt one of his laughing fits and when his psychiatrist asks what’s so funny, he eerily says “You wouldn’t get it.” Laughing at death is certainly a Joker trait and means that, by the end of the movie, his character is where we expect him to be - both literally and physically.
