The new “Joker” movie from DC Films have been a huge success. The film opened to an incredible $98.2 million during the weekend which beat out the Sony/Marvel film “Venom”, to become the biggest October debut ever.
“Joker” also earned critical praises from fans and critics alike, though some criticise the violent nature depicted, many have called it Oscar-worthy. But little does everyone know that Joaquin Phoenix’s favourite scene didn’t make the final cut in “Joker”.
During an interview with Collider, the “Joker” actor let loose about a scene that was cut from the film. “There was a scene that, that during the shoot we thought was one of the best scenes and we loved his behaviour in the scene, and I’d always really liked the scene. But Todd told me and said, ‘We’re cutting that scene out’.”.
As heartbroken as Phoenix is about the deleted scene, he later agreed with the director on the decision, “then of course I saw it, and it was very obvious. It has to go.”
He would later add in the same interview, “It actually doesn’t work. That’s just what’s so cool about movies, right? You can have a great scene, it’s something that makes sense, but the movie is the collection of all of these scenes and they have to work together to tell the story, and it actually made that whole sequence so smooth.”
Beside the actor, director Todd Phillips also gave his thoughts on the whole idea of cut scenes. “Deleted scenes are deleted for a reason. I have a thing against extended cuts and I kind of hate deleted scenes. The movie that exists is exactly the movie we want it to be.” he said in the interview.
But the director did admit that the scene Phoenix mentioned was one of the last scene he cut. The “Hangover” director also told us what the scene in question was. “It was basically a scene between him and Randall — Randall’s the guy he kills with the scissors — and it was a scene with them on the stairwell leading up to the Ha-Ha’s offices,” he said before adding, “There was a scene right after he paints the sign”.
The “Joker” movie is expected to be able to make another $450 million for an expected total of $900million. This will make the “Joker” the highest rated R-rated movies of all time and will beat out both “Deadpool” films.
Update (25th October):
In case many of you are still wondering what happened to Zazie Beetz’s character, Sophie, some light has been shed on the DC character.
Just a quick recap: In the earlier scenes, audiences were led to believe that Arthur and Sophie were seeing one another. Turns out, it was in Arthur’s head. This revelation came about when he broke into Sophie’s apartment.
Sophie was visibly terrified by Arthur’s intrusion and begged him not to hurt her and her baby girl. He then storms away and we are left wondering what happened after.
In speaking with Lawrence Sher, the film’s cinematographer told /Film that the mother-daughter duo weren’t killed. “We wanted to make the interpretation of what’s real versus what’s not real a part of the viewer’s experience,” Sher said. “For instance, how his relationship to Sophie is a fantasy to him.”
“Some people have asked me, ‘Was she killed?’ but Todd (Phillips) makes it clear she WASN’T killed,” Sher said. “Arthur is killing people who’ve wronged him in a certain way, and Sophie never wronged him.”
“We leave hints (at what is real and not real) using imagery, or the way we covered scenes similarly between scenes,” Sher said. “Outside of that, I like that people can…come to their own conclusions.”
So there you have it folks.
Sources: Collider, Complex, Buzzfeed.
