Love it or hate it, ‘Joker‘ has been a critical darling this year with Joaquin Phoenix‘s portrayal of Arthur Fleck bringing home an Oscar. While the Clown Prince of Crime may have laughed and danced his way through the box office, the ending of the film was almost completely different. Kevin Smith revealed this bit of trivia on his Fatman Beyond show and if this alternate ending had shown up on the big screen, it would have left Smith “outraged as a Batman fan!”
It should be noted that there is a pretty big spoiler as to how the film actually ends below.
As to what was changed, Smith shares he heard the following:
“Originally, the ending in the hospital was different. He’s in the hospital, and he laughs chuckles, and he says, ‘I was just thinkin’ of something funny. What was supposed to happen was you flashed back to the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and it was him killing Thomas and Martha Wayne, and the boy was screaming and crying, and he turned to walk away, and he turned back, shrugged, and shot the kid. Credits.”
As Smith points out, “What the f—, man! This world has no Batman!”
RELATED: Todd Phillips Was Kind Enough To Share The Shocking True Theme Behind ‘Joker’
We all know this was clearly a reference to Batman’s origin story when a young Bruce Wayne watched his parents get gunned down in front of him. Not only was the Clown Prince of Crime responsible in this iteration, but it also ended with him killing the future Dark Knight as well.
This is one way to have positioned Phoenix’s version of the Joker to not be connected to any of the existing DC films.
You can see Smith talking about this right around 16 and a half minutes or sit through the whole thing and hear him discuss ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ in the episode below:
