The defense against that kind of critique that I had in ready in my mind was that, looking at the two different movies, Taxi Driver showed someone who's descent into violence was inevitable. From the very beginning of it, this was a guy who wanted to hurt and kill and wanted to feel like a heroic good guy for doing it.
Arthur Fleck didn't want to kill. You could see him wanting to be relevant. And, it's easy to think that his desire to make people laugh was an extention of that effort to make himself relevant. But, that's still his desire to make people laugh.
What's more, you can see ample opportunities for things to go different in just a couple ways to make Arthur Fleck become a hero rather than a villain. And, a couple places where, should he become a villain, he would have been an ineffectual villain for all of that.
All it would have taken would have been seeing either him or the crowd that made him into a symbol for something other than threat or tool, someone who is gets enough empathy that it isn't so safe to violate them.
Re: Seed of Bismuth
Arthur Fleck didn't want to kill. You could see him wanting to be relevant. And, it's easy to think that his desire to make people laugh was an extention of that effort to make himself relevant. But, that's still his desire to make people laugh.
What's more, you can see ample opportunities for things to go different in just a couple ways to make Arthur Fleck become a hero rather than a villain. And, a couple places where, should he become a villain, he would have been an ineffectual villain for all of that.
All it would have taken would have been seeing either him or the crowd that made him into a symbol for something other than threat or tool, someone who is gets enough empathy that it isn't so safe to violate them.