In an animated sequence, the Joker is impersonated by his shadow, who acts violently and takes his place to perform his singing number for a TV show, and then abandons him on stage, before three police officers arrive and attack him.
Arthur Fleck is in custody at Arkham State Hospital awaiting trial for the crimes he committed two years prior. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart, plans to argue that Arthur suffers from dissociative identity disorder and that his Joker personality is responsible for the crimes. At a music therapy session, Arthur meets Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, who claims that she grew up in the same neighborhood he did, had an abusive father who died in a car crash, and was imprisoned after burning down her parents’ apartment building. Lee also expresses her admiration for the Joker’s crimes and personality.
During a film screening, Lee starts a fire. She and Arthur are caught trying to escape, and Arthur is placed in solitary confinement. Lee visits him to say she is being released to avoid his influence but promises to attend his trial. During an interview with television personality Paddy Meyers, Arthur sings to Lee through the TV screen, deepening her love for him.
On the day of the trial, Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent calls witnesses who dismiss Arthur’s claims of insanity. During a break, Maryanne reveals that Lee was actually a psychiatry student who grew up in the Upper West Side, and her father, a doctor, is alive. Furthermore, she voluntarily committed herself at Arkham, checked herself out, and never burned down an apartment building. When Arthur confronts Lee, she confesses that her lies were an effort to get close to Arthur but also tells him that she is pregnant from their night together and has moved into his old apartment building to create a home for them.
At the trial the next day, Arthur dismisses Maryanne and represents himself. After bringing Arthur’s former co-worker Gary Puddles and neighbor Sophie Dumond to the stand, Dent rests his case. Arthur, visibly affected by Gary’s testimony, offers no defense, although, during his speech, he mocks the Arkham guards and indicates that they abuse him. Returning to Arkham, he is taken to the showers by head guard Jackie Sullivan and two guards in retaliation, where he is stripped and violently raped. Ricky, an inmate and friend of Arthur, verbally confronts the guards, resulting in Jackie strangling him to death.
During his closing argument in court the following day, a devastated Arthur renounces his Joker persona, taking full responsibility for his actions. Enraged at this, Lee storms out, and the jury finds Arthur guilty of murder. As the foreperson reads the verdict, a car bomb explodes outside the courthouse, killing and injuring numerous attendees and scarring half of Dent’s face. In the chaos, two followers help Arthur escape.
Arthur wanders through Gotham City and encounters Lee outside his old apartment, but she rejects him for renouncing his Joker persona. As she leaves, the police apprehend Arthur and bring him back to Arkham. The next day, a young inmate approaches Arthur and begins telling a joke before repeatedly stabbing Arthur in the abdomen. As Arthur bleeds to death, his assailant carves a smile on his own face while laughing hysterically.
- Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck / Joker, a mentally ill nihilistic criminal with a clown-inspired persona, formerly an impoverished party clown and aspiring stand-up comedian. Director Todd Phillips said that while the film would venture further into Arthur’s psyche, he would not become the “Clown Prince of Crime”, as his Joker persona is an unwilling symbol to people who give him the love he always wanted.
- Lady Gaga as Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, a patient at Arkham State Hospital who becomes obsessed with Arthur and forms a deadly romantic relationship with him. Describing Lee, Phillips noted how this version of the character is manipulative, amoral and “more grounded”, with the film deliberately ignoring much of the character’s classic mannerisms and style to fit into the world created in Joker (2019).[14] Gaga felt Lee to be a “study of contradictions”, as her love and obsession for Arthur is also admiration and disgust, being both truthful and dishonest, really dangerous yet completely peaceful, deeming Lee a “very nonlinear person” like everyone involved in storytelling and thinking she was the “more real” the “more she could be a contradiction”.
- Brendan Gleeson as Jackie Sullivan, an abusive guard at Arkham State Hospital.
- Catherine Keener as Maryanne Stewart, Arthur’s lawyer.
- Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond, a single mother and Arthur’s former neighbor, whom Arthur imagined being in a romantic relationship with.
- Steve Coogan as Paddy Meyers, a popular TV personality who interviews Arthur in Arkham.
- Harry Lawtey as Harvey Dent, the newly elected assistant district attorney who plans to bring Arthur to justice for his crimes. Lawtey avoided watching previous screen portrayals of Harvey Dent and instead developed his own backstory for the character, with Phillips instilling in him the idea that, in the dawn of televised trials, Dent is cynically willing to put Arthur on trial for his own gain. Phillips confirmed that one of the film’s shots meant to signal the character’s eventual descent into his Two-Face persona from the source material, affirming that he and his crew tried to come up with a realistic answer as to why certain things happen.
- Leigh Gill as Gary Puddles, Arthur’s former clown co-worker whose life he spared.
- Ken Leung as Dr. Victor Liu, a psychologist who gives his testimony diagnosing Arthur at the trial.
- Jacob Lofland as Ricky Meline, an inmate at Arkham who admires Arthur.
- Bill Smitrovich as Judge Herman Rothwax, who presides over Arthur’s trial.
- Sharon Washington as Debra Kane, Arthur’s former social worker.
Development
Joker (2019) was intended to be a standalone film. Warner Bros. intended for it to launch DC Black, a line of DC Comics–based films unrelated to the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) franchise with darker, more experimental material, similar to the DC Black Label comics publisher. However, even before the film wrapped, Joaquin Phoenix told director Todd Phillips that he did not feel ready to leave Arthur Fleck behind; one night while falling asleep, Phoenix had a dream of his character performing onstage, telling jokes and singing, giving him the idea of possibly doing a musical sequel. They then brought the idea to producer Toby Emmerich. While Phillips said in August 2019 that he would be interested in making a sequel, depending on the film’s performance and if Phoenix was interested, he later clarified that “the movie’s not set up to [have] a sequel. We always pitched it as one movie, and that’s it.”
In October 2019, Phoenix spoke of reprising his role as Arthur Fleck, saying: “I can’t stop thinking about it… if there’s something else, we can do with Joker that might be interesting.” In another interview, he said: “It’s nothing that I really wanted to do prior to working on this movie. I don’t know that there is [more to do] … Because it seemed endless, the possibilities of where we can go with the character.” He was paid $20 million for his involvement. As the film went on to earn more than $1 billion, Phoenix and Phillips thought about a possible follow-up in the form of a Broadway theatre show. They did not consider making a conventional sequel depicting Arthur’s development into Batman’s nemesis by turning him into the Clown Prince of Crime or putting him in charge of a criminal syndicate, despite the original film’s depiction of the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents. Phillips preferred to focus on how Arthur’s breakdown captivated Gotham, being interested in examining how the very idea of entertainment went from movies and television to whatever scandal the news currently air.
In November 2019, The Hollywood Reporter reported that a sequel was in development, with Phillips, writer Scott Silver and Phoenix reprising their duties. However, Deadline Hollywood reported the same day that The Hollywood Reporter‘s story was false and that negotiations had not even begun. Phillips responded to the reports by saying that he had discussed a sequel with Warner Bros., and it remained a possibility, but it was not in development. Phillips and Phoenix started seriously considering the idea of making a Broadway sequel show to Joker at the Carlisle Theatre. After the original plans were changed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Phillips and Silver began developing a sequel while still considering Phoenix’s musical concept. Phillips found the idea risky and “dangerous” enough to give the film “audacity and complexity” with music, dance, drama, courtroom drama, comedy, happiness and sadness and a traditional love story. Aware that young moviegoers may not be interested due to preferring usual comic book films, Phillips banked on their “appetite” for something new and different to help the film differentiate itself from remakes and reboots. Phoenix suggested the idea of teaming Arthur with a “female Joker” that could serve as his dance partner in a “kind of psychotic tango”. This led Phillips and Silver to the idea of including Harley Quinn, a female villain associated with the Joker and first introduced in Batman: The Animated Series, to serve that purpose.
In early June 2022, Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy took over as co-heads of Warner Bros.’s movie studio, with the greenlighting of a sequel to Joker being one of their first actions. In June 2022, Phillips confirmed that the sequel was in development, with a script by him and Silver. The film was also revealed to be titled Joker: Folie à Deux. By February 2023, DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn confirmed that Folie à Deux would be a DC Elseworlds project, taking place outside the main cinematic DC Universe (DCU). Phillips’s goal for the film was to make it feel like it had been produced by “crazy people”, but struggled with referring to the film as a “musical”, as the film lacks traditional musical numbers, and most of the music contains dialogue, with songs like “Get Happy”, “For Once in My Life” and “That’s Life” being played when Arthur cannot pronounce the words he wants to say, with those songs conveying the emotions Arthur Fleck and Harley Quinn feel with what they seek in their relationships, with the former being drawn to romantic ballads and the latter preferring music about power.
In July 2024, Lady Gaga commented on the singing required of her: “It was unlike anything I’ve ever done before. […] For me, there’s plenty of notes, actually, from Lee. I’m a trained singer, right? So even my breathing was different when I sang as Lee. When I breathe to sing on stage, I have this very controlled way to make sure that I’m on pitch and it’s sustained at the right rhythm and amount of time, but Lee would never know how to do any of that. So, it’s like removing the technicality of the whole thing, removing my perceived art-form from it all and completely being inside of who she is.” Phillips also said of this specific interpretation of the character, “While there are some things that people would find familiar in her, it’s really Gaga’s own interpretation, and Scott [Silver, co-writer] and I’s interpretation. She became the way how Manson had girls that idolized him. The way that sometimes these [imprisoned murderers] have people that look up to them. There are things about Harley in the movie that were taken from the comic books, but we took it and made it to the way we wanted it to be.” Despite Gaga and Phoenix showing off their musical skills in past projects, Phillips did not require them to sing professionally, preferring a “rawer, more unstable sound” that fluctuated between euphoria and despair, which occasionally required singing off-key. The filmmakers asked themselves what needed to happen for two individuals to break into song in the middle of a conversation and where the music could come from when no one but the protagonists can hear it. They rationalized that the main characters are not, or should sound like, professional singers with vibrato and perfect notes, instead sounding “nerve-racking but honest”.
In August 2024, it was reported that the film would open with a Looney Tunes–inspired cartoon animated by The Triplets of Belleville animator Sylvain Chomet, which would be followed by prison riots, courtroom legal fights and a variety show sequence that has Phoenix and Gaga portrayed as a homicidal Sonny & Cher. The film’s ending, which sees a younger Arkham Asylum inmate carving a Glasgow smile for himself after a violent altercation with Arthur, was originally planned for the first film’s original scripted ending according to one source, with Arthur carving himself one in front of his crowd of supporters. However, Christopher Nolan did not allow the filmmakers to go through the idea as he mandated that only Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker from his film The Dark Knight (2008) should have a Glasgow smile. By the time Joker: Folie à Deux entered development, Nolan and his company Syncopy Inc. no longer worked with Warner Bros. after disagreements with their release treatment for Tenet (2020) by quickly sending it to Max, having moved on since 2021 to Universal Pictures to direct Oppenheimer (2023), hence allowing Phillips and his crew to implement the idea in the film with the patient who encounters Arthur.
October 4, 2024
