Worst Things Joaquin Phoenix Joker Has Done:
The Joker has garnered a lot of controversies for its overly violent scenes, or so the weak-hearted kids tell us. For many, Joker is a cinematic milestone. It showed the class divide and how it destroys the psyche of a common man that only ever wanted to make it in life. The Joker does all sorts of heinous acts. From trespassing into private property to killing people on national television, Arthur Fleck has done some pretty questionable stuff. But that is what was the essence of the movie – how one bad day can turn a simple man into a murderous maniac. The movie shows a lot of stuff that the Joker has done. We have listed out some of the most heart-wrenching of the lot.
1. Stalks a single mom
Let us be honest – stalking is cool only if you are doing it to a criminal or a drug lord. Stalking civilians who have done nothing wrong is downright evil. Arthur Fleck takes one look at Sophie and decides she is the one for him. Arthur stalks her day and night for the first few days. And remember, they only show us the one time he followed her. The movie leaves so much to the viewers’ imagination.
A single mom living in a crap hole of an apartment in the underbelly of the city is stalked by a mentally unstable guy who lives a few floors below her in the same apartment. If you were someone in her shoes, you would be scared AF by that proposition.
2. Kills a Pop Culture icon in his own show
Murray Franklin was a well-respected figure in the Late Night show of the same name in the City of Gotham. Every person who owned a television watched his show. In one episode, Murray plays the video of Arthur doing some stand-up comedy and failing miserably and uses it to mock his comic skills and his future as a comedian on stage. People will always be mean. There will always be someone who mocks you for your slightest of flaws and wrongs. That does not mean you enter their home and shoot them in the face. That is exactly what Arthur did. When he was invited to Murray Franklin’s show, he only accepted to be a part of it so that he could get close to Murray and kill the guy. Why? Because he hurt Arthur’s feelings!
3. Shoots three Wayne employees in cold blood
As we said, there will always be mean people in this world. It is not how hard you hit but how hard you get hit and still get back up for round two. Clearly Arthur fleck had one too many hits and one too many rounds he got back up. The subway scene could have been the final nail in the coffin. Three intoxicated Wayne Industries employees were misbehaving with a woman when Arthur started laughing uncontrollably. They thought that Arthur was mocking him by showing his grin. They had no idea that he was suffering a condition. After getting into a physical altercation with the trio, Arthur is beaten to an inch of his life before he takes out his gun and shoots the first two of the three right then and there. He then hunts the third one down while he is trying to escape through the stairs and shoots him dead too.
4. Breaking and Entering into another woman’s apartment
The shock of the movie was when it is revealed that Sophie was never Arthur’s girlfriend in the freaking first place. All of the scenes where we saw her consoling or smiling along with Arthur was the latter imagining and creating hallucinations out of his own mind. That is borderline schizophrenia. When Arthur finally has his “One Bad Day” and snaps, the first thing he does is get into the apartment of his ‘girlfriend’ Sophie. Sophie is just returning from her daughter’s room after tucking her child to bed. The scene where Arthur turns around and puts a finger pistol to his forehead is both chilling and frightening at the same time.
5. Kills his co-worker with a scissor while his other friend watches
Randall and Gary have been colleagues of Arthur for a long time. After Arthur is fired from his job due to his own screw-ups, Randall and Gary visit him to see how he is doing. While Gary was genuinely worried about Arthur, Randall only came to ensure his and Arthur’s stories regarding the gun Arthur used to kill the Wayne employees in the subway matched. Randall was never nice to Arthur and always tried to bring him down. By that time, Arthur had already snapped internally and was only looking for an opening to rip Randall apart. As Gary watches in horror, Arthur uses the scissor to first stab Randall in the neck and then pierces his eye with the same weapon.
6. Starts a City-Wide riot
The primary objective of the movie was to show how the elites screw up the Gotham on a daily basis and the common masses have become fed up with being the ones that end up bearing the brunt of the mess which they did not even create in the first place. The Clown Riots happened as a result of the tensions between the rich and the poor reaching a record high. Joker was actually the fuel and the fire for it all. It was his murder of the three Wayne employees wearing the Clown makeup that made Thomas Wayne claim that all the poor and destitute are “Clowns” on national television. It was his murder of Murray Franklin and his wonderful explanation of how awful society is that finally turned the people against the system.
7. Murders his own psychiatrist
At the end of the movie, we see Arthur Fleck is captured and being interrogated by an unknown psychiatrist. And still, in a high-security mental asylum for the criminally insane, the Joker is still smiling. Right in the next scene, Arthur is seen walking out leaving bloody footprints in his wake. It is not stated explicitly but implied that Arthur probably killed that innocent doctor who was only trying to help him. The fact that Arthur has finally crossed the line, killing people that did not even know him, as opposed to him killing people who had only wronged him in life, shows that he has done his complete transition to becoming the Joker, the Clown Prince of Chaos.
8. Takes a gun to a Children’s Hospital
After Randall hands him a gun for his protection following Arthur being jumped by a bunch of teenagers, we see Arthur performing at a Children’s hospital as part of his job next. There are certain moral rules that everyone must follow when you visit a Children’s hospital. And while they do not say it directly, we think bringing a loaded gun to a place like that is a strict no-no. Arthur’s sudden stumble makes the gun he is packing fall on the floor and the Children, as well as the staff, are none too happy about it.
9. Matricide
Arthur Fleck discovers that she was fed lies all his life by his own mother. Stealing her medical files from the State Hospital and reading them finally revealed that there is more to the truth than what he knows. Whether his mother actually adopted him or whether Thomas Wayne silenced Penny using their money and wealth is left to the audience’s imagination. But Arthur is not happy with these revelations. He decides that to end a sorry excuse for a life he has, he must cut ties with whatever is holding him back to the past. His mother, who is recovering from a stroke, is smothered with a pillow and mercilessly killed by Arthur, his own son, who has had enough of her ‘lies’.
10. Responsible for the death of an innocent bystander
As people started dressing up as clowns to imitate Arthur Fleck, the situation went from bad to worse. Arthur is chased around the city by two police officers who have started suspecting him in the murders of the three Wayne employees. But Arthur escapes into the subway again. There he tries to mask his presence within a group of people who are also dressed as a clown and are going to the Clown Rally to oppose Thomas Wayne. The police officers get into the train and pull out their guns to make way and search for Fleck, who is still hiding in the crowd. In the commotion, one of the officers kills a civilian who just happened to get in the way accidentally. Arthur was totally responsible for this since he was more than happy to use that guy’s death and the eventual beat-down of the cops by the rest of the now enraged crowd as an excuse to run away.
