the explosive ending of joaquin phoenix'sorigin story for the joker will have fans debating his version of the iconic comic bookvillain for years to come. however, the original ending was even morechilling and had a brutal connection to heath ledger's joker. on top of that, over 30 minutes of additionalfootage didn't make it into the final film, meaning there are lots of deleted scenes missingfrom the theatrical cut. yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, i'm jan and inthis video i'm revealing all the deleted scenes from 2019's joker and explaining the alternateending you never got to see. there will of course be spoilers, so takecare if you haven't seen the movie yet.
in the film, we watch arthur fleck pass throughmultiple breaking points on the way to his transformation into the joker. one of these is his discovery of the abusehe suffered as a three-year-old child, but the original screenplay delved even deeperinto arthur's troubled childhood. in a scene scrapped from the final film, arthurrevealed to sophie that as a child he'd been bullied by other children who mocked him andnicknamed him him "happy" because of his affliction. by the time he was ten years old, arthur wasso sick of it that he took a razor to his mouth and cut a smile onto his face, tellinghis bullies: "you want happy? here, how's this for happy?"
the childhood injury left arthur with scarsaround the corners of his mouth and brings to mind the stories of how heath ledger'sjoker claimed he got his scars. "you wanna know how i got these scars? my father was a drinkerand one night.. he comes at me with the knife. 'why so serious?' he sticks the blade in my mouth. 'let's put a smile on that face.'" the original ending for joker was going torevisit arthur's horrific childhood self-harm
in a scene where after the police car crashes,arthur escapes, grabs a piece of broken glass and uses it to carve a long smile into thecorners of his mouth again. although joker is r-rated and obviously violent,it feels like this original ending would have been even more shocking and brutal. it's possible the filmmakers or studio consideredshowing arthur inflict this injury on himself too gruesome to show on screen. there is a nod to this original idea in thefinal version of the film though when, during the riots, arthur takes the blood in his mouthcaused by the car crash and paints a bloody elongated smile onto his face with his fingers.
it's also possible the studio decided theywanted to avoid any suggestion that this joker could be connected with heath ledger's version. "so i stick a razor in my mouth and do this.. to myself. now i'm always smiling." the filmmakers have stressed multiple timesthat the movie is not connected in any way to the dceu, and the screenplay also statesthat the "story takes place in its own universe [and] has no connection to any of the dc filmsthat have come before it." arthur's facial scars would have also madethe scene where he meets the young bruce wayne even creepier because, originally, young brucewas going to stare at the scars around arthur's
mouth and then reach out to touch them, foreshadowingthe future connection between the two characters. "you.. you complete me." the very final scene of arthur in arkham statehospital was also going to be quite different. originally, his cut smile was going to beall stitched up and the scene with the hospital doctor played out a little longer. in an earlier script, she asked him if hewas keeping up-to-date with his journal and if he'd written about his episode. arthur nodded and said it was how he rememberedit, but when the doctor looked in the book
it was full of empty pages. the movie then ended with an orderly walkingarthur back to his cell while he danced to the tune of frank sinatra's "that's life". in contrast to the theatrical version, inthe original screenplay, arthur doesn't appear to kill the hospital doctor, nor does he seemto be about to escape from the ward. on top of these changes to the ending, thereare numerous deleted scenes from the first cut of the movie which, according to directortodd phillips, is a solid half hour longer than the final version. there are some key moments from the trailerssuch as these which didn't make it into the
final movie and i'm going to go through thescreenplay and footage from the set to tell you what these deleted scenes are. arthur's relationship with sophie is imaginaryin the final version of the movie, but originally that wasn't the case in the script and allof arthur and sophie's scenes were real and did actually happen. there are also several additional scenes betweenarthur and sophie which were deleted from the final film. after arthur stalks and follows sophie towhere she works at gotham savings bank, there's on set footage of joaquin phoenix coming outof the bank meaning there was an additional
scene inside. in the screenplay, arthur went inside thebank and walked up to sophie who worked there as a teller, and pretended he wanted to openan account. in this sequence which was scrapped from themovie, arthur saw sophie visibly shudder when an older bank manager put his hand on hershoulder. later, when arthur and sophie are out together,she tells him she's been fired after filing a complaint about the manager harassing herand trying to sleep with her. and there's a deleted scene in the trailerswhere arthur is carrying his wand of flowers as he walks along the corridor of his apartmentblock.
he's wearing his full joker outfit and ison his way to the murray franklin show. in the original screenplay, arthur leavesthe flowers and an envelope full of money at sophie's apartment door, together witha note asking her to watch him on tv. this scene changed in the final film witharthur simply exiting his building without taking anything to sophie. there's an interesting deleted scene afterarthur is sacked and returns to the talent agency to collect his things from his locker. after arthur leaves, there's on-set footageof randall chasing after him and the two of them arguing, then arthur taking off randall'sclown nose and throwing it into the road.
the original screenplay explains that duringthis cut scene, randall is annoyed that arthur mentioned that he'd given him the gun. randall warns arthur that the cops are allover the subway murders, are now looking for a clown and that they'll eventually trackhim down. arthur denies he had anything to do with thekillings, but randall seems to know the truth and he goes on to tell arthur that a lot ofpeople in the city are happy about what happened to the wall street guys. randall also tells his ex-colleague that masksare now being sold based on arthur's clown face.
a cut scene teased in the trailers shows arthurgetting thrown out of wayne hall after his run-in with thomas wayne. the screenplay describes the scene in moredetail and that arthur, as a performer, "knows how to take a fall [and] plays it up in frontof [the protestors] for all it's worth. he rolls to his feet with a bit of panache[and the] protestors go crazy, cheering and applauding his act [with arthur taking] adeep dramatic bow." this deleted scene together with randall'sscrapped scene definitely play up even more the sense of how arthur's actions are ignitinggotham's citizens to rise up against the rich. a really interesting fantasy subplot thatwas cut from the final film involves arthur's
ginger cat. in the original screenplay, the cat appearedto arthur whenever he was in his apartment, purring or staring at him and generally observingwhatever he was doing. and as arthur slowly transformed into thejoker, he began talking to the cat. the final scene with the cat happens justafter arthur kills randall. we see it sitting on a window sill thoughthe script makes a point of saying that it has no reflection, suggesting that all alongthe cat was just another manifestation of arthur's delusions and lack of grip on reality. at that moment, he lets the cat out of thewindow, telling it to go be free, indicating
how arthur was finally setting himself freeto embrace the personality of the joker entirely. this imaginary cat could have been an intriguingsubplot that paralleled arthur's descent into madness, but instead it looks like in thefinal movie, the filmmakers took the fantasy element of the cat and merged it with sophie'sstoryline instead. the scene after arthur kills the three wallstreet guys on the subway was originally quite different. in the original screenplay, arthur runs intothe public bathroom and ends up trying to shoot himself in the head before hiding thegun away, then washing the clown make-up off his face.
in the final film, this scene was completelychanged, with arthur dancing around and seemingly embracing this side of himself. in fact, arthur's dancing was something phillipsand phoenix gave more prominence to in the final version. phillips said in a q&a that he always thought"that arthur had music in him" and that they added the dancing to the bathroom scene to"show that [the music is] fighting to get out." another deleted scene had arthur personallygoing to thomas wayne's offices to hand-deliver a letter from his mother to her former employer.
there's on-set footage of a scene we neversaw in the final film of joaquin phoenix outside an office and running up to someone with aletter before falling over. in the screenplay, arthur also goes insidethe office and asks to see thomas wayne. but the receptionist refuses and he ends upgetting thrown out of the building by security guards. after arthur's mother is taken to hospital,there's a deleted scene in the screenplay where a doctor and couple of nurses come upto arthur and ask him if he's really the guy from the clip that was played on the murrayfranklin show. "when i was a little boy and told people iwas going to be a comedian, everyone laughed
at me. well noone's laughing now." "you can say that again pal." arthur tries to deny it, but the doctor andnurses are convinced he's the guy they saw on tv and they begin to point out how unfunnyhe was and that murray made a fool out of him. arthur ends up really mad and tells them togo before he strangles all three of them with a stethoscope. later, after arthur has killed his mother,there's a deleted scene from the trailers
which shows arthur alone outside. this looks like the scene from the screenplaywhere arthur is at his mother's grave in gotham's potter's field cemetery. arthur was the only person who attended hismother's funeral and the two detectives tracking arthur were also watching him from a distanceat that point. another curious bit of deleted footage fromthe trailers has arthur walking down the corridor with a set of flowers. this is when he's on his way to murray franklin'sshow as he's got the full joker outfit on, but for the same scene in the final film arthurdoesn't have the flowers.
one of joaquin phoenix's favourite scenesended up cut from the final edit. the scene was part of the rant and monologuethat joker delivers on the murray franklin show just before he shoots the host in thehead. in an interview with the associated press,phoenix explained that he experimented a lot with his performance, how in some scenes hewould cry and in other versions of the same scene he would make jokes or be angry. the actor claimed that his best take for therant arthur gives on murray's show couldn't be used because it didn't work when it wasput together with everything else in the movie. according to phoenix, the version used inthe movie isn't very good, but it worked best
in the context of the entire film. so, what did you think of this joker originstory? and are there any deleted scenes you wishhad been included? leave your thoughts about the movie in thecomments below! if you want to learn about more amazing moviedeleted scenes, tap left for the horrific pennywise scenes cut from it chapter 2 ortap right for another video you're sure to like. and if you enjoyed this, a like is hugelyappreciated and why not unleash your inner movie lover by subscribing to get more videoslike this every week.
thanks for watching and see ya next time. yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!
