Spoiler Discussion

1.The movie sets up some of the twists quite well by revealing Arthur’s state of mind in a more innocuous way. When he starts dreaming about talking to his symbolic father in Robert De Niro it helped plant the suspicion that he engaged in delusions, so I treated future positive scenes of his with more skepticism. That’s why I had an inkling that his girlfriend wasn’t really there, so the reveal that it was in reality a delusion was rewarding and felt deserved.

However, I think that the film went and did the reveal too obviously. When Sophie (Zazie Beetz) confronts Arthur in her apartment, it’s obvious that she’s never met him and doesn’t know who he is. That by itself is sufficient at portraying that those past date scenes were delusions. But the direct reveal, tells us explicitly those were delusions which is confusing, because it contradicts the subtlety of the other possible delusions – like the Messiah scene at the end. Why wasn’t there a cutaway- of Joker just flailing around on top of a car with no one paying attention to highlight the nature of the delusion? If the initial reveal of the Sophie delusion was never done, then the audience gets to play around more with what is and isn’t real.

2. When Glen Fleshler and Leigh Gill walk in to confront Phoenix to fess up about the police, I knew something awful was going to happen. I still wasn’t prepared for the kill scene. Gill’s reaction to the entire situation and the ensuing terror he felt was the perverse kind of hillarious I mentioned in the review proper. When he can’t reach up to open the door I couldn’t stop laughing at how unfortunate the situation was. From Arthur’s prank jump scare to him kissing Gill on the head, I could tell he had truly become a true source of chaos.