When Jack Nicholson took on the role of The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, his legend in movie villain history was sealed as one of the most deranged miscreants among cinematic rogues.
Nicholson won a Golden Globe award for his role as the hysterical evildoer. Over the years, that performance has become so much a part of the Batman movie ethos that it was rumoured that subsequent films on the caped vigilante would require more than one bad guy to compensate for Nicholson’s monumental absence from the frame. As it turns out, every film with the pointy-eared vigilante since then has had at least two bad guys in it.
Coincidence?
(clockwise from right) Heath Ledger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman and Jack Nicholson all terrorized Gotham City.(Photographs by AFP; (Heath Ledger) Warner Bros.
No clash of titans can be memorable without a good villain. Take all your favourite Bond films, for example; the story, the capers, the scam-craft and the showdown are all the more intriguing for the baddie’s ability to puppeteer misdeeds with characteristic menace. His goons, his intricate traps, his unhinged views of the world and his insatiable appetite for death and destruction are paramount to making an audience cheer for the hero. It’s no different with
The Dark Knight.
If Batman is the dark knight of Gotham, The Joker is its evil harlequin. Both rely on their outward appearances to strike fear in their victims and while one is hell-bent against murder in the name of justice, the other is all about murder justified for the sake of murder. Both are extremely intelligent individuals and each is a sworn enemy of the other. As with Burton’s Batman, The Dark Knight underscores The Joker’s single-minded need to hunt out, challenge and destroy his enemy. The rest of Batman’s gallery of rogues always concern themselves with the usual fare—ill-gotten gains, chaos and world domination. If Batman gets trapped and/or killed along the way, that’s fine. The Joker’s sole driving force, however, is the desire to kill Batman. The more death, destruction and pandemonium that can be thrown into the mix, the better. It is this self-destructive streak in The Joker and his obsessive disposition towards facing off with the dark knight that make their pairing so compelling. Shoot now, think later.
Even before his untimely death, Heath Ledger’s portrayal of one of comicdom’s most chilling villains set the press and blog pages on fire. Kevin Smith, director of the cult classic Clerks, wrote on his blog after seeing an early screening of the film, “Heath Ledger didn’t so much give a performance as he disappeared completely into the role; I know I’m not the first to suggest this, but he’ll likely get at least an Oscar nod (if not the win) for Best Supporting Actor... Nolan and crew have created something close to a masterpiece.”