Folie à Deux’s Ending Got here From a Scrapped Thought for the First Movie

Joker: Folie à Deux might have been a surprise damp squib on the field workplace this weekend, however its ending has gotten people talking regardless in the event that they went out to see the sequel or not. And as controversial a conclusion as it’s, apparently we nearly acquired one thing related within the authentic movie’s climax… if not for a purported refusal from Christopher Nolan himself.

Folie à Deux climaxes with an imprisoned Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), his trial concluded and awaiting the demise sentence, being stabbed to demise by a fellow inmate. As Arthur bleeds out, within the obscured background we see the inmate start to cackle in a Joker-ish method, earlier than taking the knife to their very own face and seemingly carving a smiling scar alongside their mouth, akin to the looks of Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Darkish Knight. As one Joker falls, one other metaphorically rises. However a brand new report suggests {that a} model of that controversial second nearly got here to move in Todd Phillips’ authentic Joker film.

As a part of a brand new report on the Hollywood Reporter discussing the fallout of Folie à Deux‘s field workplace flop, the commerce cites a supply that alleged that the unique script for the primary Joker concluded with Arthur, standing earlier than his gathered supporters, scarring himself in that acquainted smile sample. Nevertheless, the thought was scrapped—not at Phillips’ behest, and even Warner Bros.’, however one of many studio’s different premier administrators on the time, Christopher Nolan, who purportedly believed that solely the late Heath Ledger’s incarnation of the Joker ought to be distinguished by the smile scar.

On the time of the primary Joker, Nolan and Warner Bros. had an extremely tight relationship—a relationship that might then distinctly bitter within the wake of the 2020 covid-19 pandemic, when the director balked at Warner Bros.’ plans to place its 2021 theatrical slate on streaming day and date by the studio’s platform Max (then identified by its full title, HBO Max). Already annoyed by the theatrical rollout of his time-bending movie Tenet by Warner in 2020, Nolan was some of the vociferous and notable administrators who publicly lambasted the choice. Breaking his conventional distribution relationship with Warner Bros., he took his critically acclaimed smash hit Oppenheimer to Common final 12 months.

All that implies that by the point that Folie à Deux was rolling round, Nolan wasn’t precisely in at Warner Bros. with the sway to nix at the very least somebody getting scarred within the film’s climax. Would the second have been extra controversial if it was Arthur’s Joker scarring himself, or is the wild ending twist extra about the way it sharply takes him out of the image? We’ll by no means know now, however one factor’s for sure—don’t ask Chris Nolan how he feels about it, he almost definitely won’t tell you.

Need extra io9 information? Try when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and all the pieces it’s essential to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.