The first actor I saw play the Joker onscreen was Cesar Romero, a 1960's "Latin Heartthrob" in the vein of Andy Garcia or Antonio Banderas. This was on the campy, live-action comic book TV show starring Adam West as the Caped Crusader. Romero's Joker was a criminal and a psychopath. but in a really corny way. Like all the other villains on the show, he had a theme, and all his henchmen dressed in nearly identical uniforms that were a bit clownish. Whenever he set an elaborate trap for Batman and Robin or came up with an excruciating way of killing them, (which he would always explain in detail before doing it, thereby giving Batman time to come up with a plan to escape,) it was always based on a practical joke or a carnival ride or something fun like that. He was memorable but not a very convincing or scary villain.
Next up is Jack Nicholson, the Joker to Michael Keaton's Batman in Tim Burton's 1989 relaunch of the franchise. The film overall was dark and moody, as a lot of Burton's films are, indeed, as many fans of Batman expected. Gone was the BAM! and KAPOW! of the 60s, in its place a brooding, troubled Batman and a truly dangerous Joker. Jack Napier was a gangster who was doublecrossed and left for dead by his boss, but he didn't die. He ended up in a vat of this horrible stuff that gave him the perma-grin, discolored his skin, and turned him into a right nutter. He was obsessed with art and beauty, or more precisely, destroying same. He did murder people, lots of them, and Nicholson did a great job making us believe that the Joker was just out to lunch, but the film itself, while considerably more thoughtful than the old TV show, didn't really present much in the way of psychological drama or moral ambiguity.
Which brings us to Heath Ledger, in the role that drove him into the depression that killed him. Ledger's Joker at first appears to be an eccentric crime boss. We see him stealing from the mob in the first scene, and later conspiring with the heads of Gotham's criminal underground to kill Batman. As the movie goes on, however, Lucius Fox (played excellently by Morgan Freeman,) tells Bruce Wayne that some men "just want to watch the world burn," and we soon see that the Joker is one of these. He plays an elaborate "practical joke" on Gotham's knight-in-shining-armor District Attorney, for the sole purpose of turning Gotham's best hope for a safe and peaceful city into a disfigured, bitter, and unhinged shell of a man, a man who turns a gun on a child by the end of the film. Another one of his "jokes" consists of putting 2 bombs on 2 boats, each full of people fleeing Gotham during his reign of terror. He puts on each boat the detonator for the other boat's bomb. If one boat blows up the other, they will live, but if neither boat explodes by midnight, he'll blow them both. This sort of complexity is far beyond what we usually see in a comic book movie villain. The Joker doesn't want to hurt innocent people, he wants to turn them into killers, bring everyone down to his level and feed off the misery. Ledger hits it spot on, too, with the help of really creepy, perpetually smudged makeup. His nasal, high-pitched voice and his maniacal laugh paint the perfect picture of a truly deranged mind. He doesn't have a name, and I can't imagine what he would have been like as a child, or what kind of trauma you would have to endure to get that frakked up. He's just the Joker, a little like Stephen King's Walkin' Dude, sowing the seeds for the destruction of men as he walks the path.
3 comments:
Ledger's 'joker' was impeccable. A villian more brilliant and terrifying than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, for he does not fear his mortality and isn't vain or insecure. He is driven by questions: are you, capable of evil. are you as civilized and better than i? and will you take responsibility for your actions? and a demented sense of amusement.
ps. thank you for introducing me to the fantastic world of batman.
Hey senor toaster,
If you like the Ledger Joker you should check out this one comic series called "Batman: the Killing Joke." It's a short book about the Joker's desire to show that the world is as chaotic and evil as he is. It's really good stuff.
There is no proof the role caused him to become depressed. People who worked on the movie all say he was fine. The kind of depression to cause suicide could be a quiet one, that is true. But it could have been he liked pills and took too many.
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