*Spoiler alert for the plot of Joker.
Thanks to Joker cinematographer Lawrence Sher, viewers now know that Zazie Beetz’s character Sophie wasn’t killed by Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix). However, the film’s ambiguous ending regarding Sophie’s status still made some viewers nervous. Enter Todd Phillips, who has given the final answer.
“He doesn’t kill her, definitively,” the Joker director told IndieWire. “As the filmmaker and the writer, I am saying he doesn’t kill her. We like the idea that it’s almost a litmus test for the audience to say,’ how crazy is he?’ Most people that I’ve spoken to think he didn’t kill her because they understand the idea that he only kills people that did him wrong. She had nothing to do with it. Most people understood that, even as a villain, he was living by a certain code. Of course, he didn’t kill this woman down the hall.”
He also said there was a scene he cut from the film that revealed that Sophie is alive and well in her apartment, watching Arthur’s interview with TV host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Phillips said he cut the scene because he wanted the film to be told more from Arthur’s point of view.
However, as S&A deputy editor Trey Mangum points out in his Joker review, Sophie was, at one point in the film’s script development, going to be one of Arthur’s numerous victims. Thankfully, this decision was scrapped for a story that keeps Sophie alive and keeps her from becoming another woman in a refrigerator.
READ MORE:
The Joke’s On Us: Racism, Ableism And More In The New ‘Joker’ Trailer
Throw ‘Joker’ Away, It Has Nothing To Say
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
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