When we think of villains in super hero movies, the Joker, Gotham’s Prince of Crime, is without a doubt one of the most iconic character that will come up to our mind. In this movie, we will see the origin story of Arthur Fleck also known as the Joker. A depressed and failed comedian in Gotham City, who has been tyrannized and overlooked by society, turned mad when he found out and remembered the truth behind his mother’s untold secrets.
In the beginning of the movie, we will see Arthur Fleck, living a normal day in his life, flipping an advertisement sign outside of his work, when all of a sudden, a group of hooligans stole the board from him. Unsatisfied with the troubles that the hooligans made, they decided to smash the board into Arthur’s head and beat him down to the ground.
Bleeding, and all bruised up, Arthur’s manager talked to him regarding the incident. However, without being able to explain what happened, the manager did not want to hear what Arthur had to say, and threatened to fire him from his job. Based on what we know so far, we can clearly see how Arthur is being tyrannized and overlooked by society which are some of the triggering factors that started to drive Arthur Fleck into madness.
While Arthur is going through all this madness, he had seen a letter written by his mother that was meant to be for Thomas Wayne, his “supposed” father. However, when Arthur spoked with him, he found out that he was not his real father, and that Arthur’s mother actually adopted him, but not only that, but he also found out that she let her boyfriend at that time, abuse Arthur as a young boy.
Filled with emotion and rage, Arthur decided to go to the hospital to visit his mom who was brought there the night before due to a heart attack. He later on killed her on the same hospital bed, and that is when he completely lost control of himself. He started going on a rampage killing a former co-worker and even the TV show host, Murray in front of live audience.
As a result, Arthur’s actions started to trigger violence in Gotham City, causing not only damages in businesses but also killings of many people including famous Gotham politician, Thomas Wayne and his wife.
Finally, we all know that people can only go through so much pain and pressure before they lose themselves. We can see in Arthur’s case, that the incidents that happened to him, only made it worse for his condition to act sane. As a result, he ended up driving himself into madness and found his purpose by committing violent crimes.
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