VOTD: How 'Joker' Should Have Ended

For better or worse, Joker is likely going to be a big contender during awards season. Sure, it's nice that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences might pay more attention to a genre that has mostly only ever been popular among general audiences, but it's a shame that the movie had to be one with so little to actually say. But I digress.

How It Should Have Ended is here to give Joker the conclusion that would have made everyone happy, including Arthur Fleck himself. After all, if the struggling comedian and mentally unstable guy was able to grow up as an orphan in the Wayne family, we might have seen a much different superhero emerge after Thomas and Martha Wayne's death. But that's not the only kooky ending they've come up with. Find out how Joker should have ended below.

The easiest ending here is the one that probably nearly everybody thought of while watching the movie. Why doesn't Arthur's fellow clown friend, the dwarf guy, call the police after he's witnessed him kill somebody? Not only does he kill a man in front of his eyes, but he tells him exactly where he's going to be. Then Murray Franklin wouldn't have been killed, and maybe Thomas and Martha Wayne might still be alive, even if they always seemed destined to die no matter what.

But Joker really should have ended with a more solid grasp on exactly what it was trying to say about society. Because the only idea that the movie puts forth is that society is messy and complicated, and that's not exactly the most novel idea for a movie that feels like it's trying so hard to be an elevated form of your average comic book story.