One of the biggest revelations in Joker was that Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck's relationship with Zazie Beetz 's Sophie was not real and was all inside his mind. This, according to Beetz, was not set from the start and Sophie's role and story actually evolved and changed during filming.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly until Arthur lets himself into Sophie's apartment after his mother's death and...she barely recognizes him. Viewers then see alternate versions of Sophie's scenes where Arthur is interacting with thin air, clearly indicating that the entire relationship was a fabrication.
He realized that things weren't real when he finished reading his mother's medical records. He came to Sophie's apartment and intended to tell her what had happened. But in fact, Sophie's response made him realize that his relationship with Sophie had been just a hallucination.
At one point, Arthur rings the bell of Sophie's apartment and, after she opens the door, he kisses her promptly. Sophie appears to enjoy that surprise.
Director Of Joker Reveals The Fate Of Zazie Beetz's Character
Was Joker's girlfriend imaginary?
The late realization that Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) had imagined his entire romantic relationship with his neighbor Sophie Dumond (played by Zazie Beetz) is a shocker for the audience and apparently also for Arthur, as he points a finger gun to his temple as she pleads with him to leave her apartment.
Director Todd Phillips considered the character's body size as one way to represent his vulnerability. It is important to emphasize that unlike most people who diet to lose weight or who develop an eating disorder, Phoenix's weight loss was intended for the short amount of time it took to shoot the movie.
What mental illness does Arthur Fleck have in Joker?
JOKER'S LAUGHING DISEASE...
Arthur Fleck clearly had a diagnosis of pseudobulbar affect—uncontrollable episodes of crying and laughing, made worse by any emotional content. In the US alone, 1.5-2 million people suffer from this condition. During his laughter, there was always a deep sorrow and agony underneath.
Thomas is furious and swiftly lets Arthur know that he and his mother never had an affair, and that he fired her because she was increasingly unstable. Oh, and she did a stint at the Arkham Asylum. Oh, and Arthur was actually adopted.
The psychopathology Arthur exhibits is unclear, preventing diagnosis of psychotic disorder or schizophrenia; the unusual combination of symptoms suggests a complex mix of features of certain personality traits, namely psychopathy and narcissism (he meets DSM-5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder).
Filming for Joker: Folie Á Deux began on December 11, 2022. Production for the first film lasted around three months, and with the ramped-up budget for the sequel and reportedly elaborate musical setpieces, filming for the sequel took a bit longer. It wrapped up filming in April 2023.
1. It's all in his head. Before the credits roll on Joker, audiences are asked to suspend all belief that what they've been watching is actually true. As the movie heads into its final chapter, it becomes increasingly clear that the Harlequin of Hate has been telling a few porky pies.
The Joker movie makes it clear that not all of the events we see are real and that much of the action is imagined or hallucinated. It is never made apparent, however, just what events might be real, giving rise to the possibility that nothing we've seen actually happened and that the whole film is a madman's dream.
Much like her son, Penny suffered from an unspecified mental illness. She was responsible for letting her former boyfriend abuse Arthur in his childhood and was temporarily sent to the Arkham State Hospital for unsolicited claims.
The Joker's age changes depending on the version of the character – for example, in Batman: The Animated Series, he's 44 years old, but in some stories in the comics, he has been portrayed as being in his late 50's, so it's not surprising that the movie went for a younger portrayal.
IndieWire recently asked Phillips about Sophie's fate during a video interview with Anne Thompson, to which the director doubled down on the answer that Sophie is alive at the end of “Joker.”
However, given her role in Arthur's descent into complete insanity, there's one certain thing about Penny Fleck: she is partially responsible for making her son to become the person he is now.
Arthur Fleck is an oddly specific surname, and while it could be pulled out of nowhere by writer/director Todd Phillips, a theory suggests that it's actually a cheeky reference to Ben Affleck. The character's name sounds a lot like Affleck when shortened to A. Fleck.
Later, Arthur goes to Arkham State Hospital and steals his mother's records, and finds out that he was in fact adopted, and that Thomas Wayne is not his father and that Penny is not his true mother.
The shot actually comes from Harley Quinn who, in Batman #99, showed that she was willing to put the Joker down -- permanently. Her shot doesn't kill Joker, but it does take out his right eye, and it's no accident.
Batman and Joker definitely aren't brothers in the comics. While the Joker movie plays very deeply with this idea, it still maintains the same stance. In the books, Joker's origin story has been a mystery. Readers have come across multiple different ones over the years.
Also in those records are some newspaper clippings that reveal Arthur was three years old when the authorities learned that his mother's boyfriend abused them. This puts Arthur's birth year in 1948 or 1949, meaning that he was 32-33 years old during the events of the film.
