How Joker is completely different from the comics .

Director Todd Philips has been clear it was never his intention to adapt any specific comic when he directed Joker, and now that we can all see the film for ourselves, it’s clear that he meant it. In both its plot and its themes, Joker has more in common with 1976’s Taxi Driver and 1982’s The King of Comedy than any DC or Marvel comic book movie.

Still, whether Philips intends it or not, Joker is at least partly a child of the comics. 

The film is set in Gotham City, the Wayne family is in full attendance (even their butler shows up), and the subject of Joker is one of the most popular comic book bad guys of the last century. Not to mention Joker ends with one more portrayal of the murder scene that finds the young Bruce Wayne left an orphan in an alley.

Regardless, Joker diverges sharply from the source material, even from the few comics which gave the Clown Prince of Crime some semblance of an origin story. Here are some of the biggest ways Joker is different from the comics.

In DC comics, we know at least that Joker exists

Throughout Joker, it’s clear Arthur Fleck lives in a world of fantasy. As he’s watching a late night talk show with his mother, Arthur imagines himself in the audience of the show, eventually being called up to the stage by host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Perhaps the most crushing discovery is that the relationship Arthur imagines he has with Sophie (Zazie Beetz) is completely imaginary. The real Sophie barely remembers his name.

These fantasies call every event in the film into question. While his broadcast argument with Murray Franklin is nothing like his earlier fantasy in tone, for example, it does seem awfully strange the host doesn’t pull the plug as soon as Fleck starts talking about murdering people. It could be that everything that happens on the show is Fleck’s delusion. It could very well be that most of the film is simply Fleck’s fantasy and that he’s always been a patient at the mental institution we find him in at the end.

While the Joker of the comics is certainly no less prone to delusion, we’re not seeing DC Comics solely from his point of view. We know that Joker, at least, exists in that narrative and not simply as a more violent fantasy of himself. Batman and the other heroes of DC have had to confront him directly and deal with the aftermath of his brutality.

In Joker, a classic murder scene unfolds differently

One of the more predictable events at the end of Joker is the murder of the Waynes. As Gotham erupts in violence, the Waynes emerge from a theater showing 1981’s Zorro: The Gay Blade, and Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) steers them down an alleyway in hopes of avoiding the riots. Unfortunately, one of the clown-mask-wearing rioters spots the family and follows them. He calls out to Thomas Wayne and tells him he’s going to give him what he deserves. He murders the couple, yanking off Martha Wayne’s pearl necklace in the process, and leaves the young Bruce Wayne helpless with his parents’ corpses.

Even if we assume that we are meant to believe the events of this scene actually do take place and aren’t just a part of Fleck’s imagination, it diverges significantly from the comic book murders of the Waynes. When Joe Chill kills Thomas and Martha Wayne in the comics, there’s no overt political or social uprising at work. He doesn’t wear a…

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