He's been a fixture of every single big-screen Batman franchise, but the cinematic attempts
at the Joker have never really lined up with the version that we see in the comics.
Even when they're great performances with iconic visuals, there's always something that
the movies get wrong.
We've all seen Thomas and Martha Wayne get shot down in an alley about 47 times, so we
all know that superhero movies love to give their viewers an origin story.
It's not just for the good guys, either — almost every villain who steps onto the screen brings
a whole backstory with them.
Normally, that's not a problem, and can actually give those villains the pathos that makes
for a compelling story.
In the Joker's case, however, it's the exact opposite.
The biggest offender in this regard is, of course, Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, in
which Jack Nicholson took on the role of the Clown Prince of Crime.
Not only do we get a full origin story, his past gets tied back into Batman's own origin
so that we can wrap everything up in a nice bow, which ultimately makes him less interesting.
We see that he's a weird, catchphrase-spewing homicidal maniac long before he tumbles into
a vat of acid.
The only real difference, aside from an admittedly iconic look, is that he gets slightly more
artistic with his murders.
For a while, it seemed like the movies had learned their lesson on this front.
The Joker that we saw in The Dark Knight shows up fully formed and even offers conflicting
versions of his own origin depending on who he's talking to.
"You want to know how I got these scars?"
Eve more recently, Jared Leto's version in Suicide Squad is downright inexplicable in
pretty much every way.
Now, though, we have an entire movie about the Joker's origin, without any signs of Batman,
set for release this year.
Hopefully this time, they'll finally be able to get rid of all that compelling mystery
he's been burdened with for so long!
Fans have long accepted the idea that it's Batman who's Bruce Wayne's true identity,
and not the billionaire playboy alter-ego, and it's a good rule of thumb.
And yet, the movies treat the Joker, someone who exists specifically in response to Batman,
as someone who always has to have that personal connection.
Admittedly, they do this with most of the villains as a little bit of origin story shorthand.
In the Joel Schumacher films, the Riddler and Poison Ivy are both former employees of
Wayne Industries, out for revenge against their old boss.
The Joker, however, exists specifically to be a counterpoint to Batman.
The person under the mask is basically irrelevant compared to the ideological battle being waged
against the symbol.
That aspect of the Joker's character, however, is continually missed by the films.
In the '89 Batman, it's not enough that the Joker's trying to murder the entire city with
a cloud of poison gas, there has to be a personal connection to get the crimefighter into action.
Even in 2019's Joker solo film, billed as being more of a character study than a superhero
flick, Thomas Wayne appears as an antagonist to provide that connection yet again.
For all its flaws, the '89 Batman movie incorporates one longtime, definitive element of the Joker
that no other film does.
It's the one that remembers his trademark is poison.
"With a new secret ingredient, smiley."
… "What is that?"
In the comics, Joker Toxin dates back to the character's very first appearance in 1940,
and has been a signature of the character ever since.
In addition to the outright creepiness of a corpse with a smile frozen on its face,
there's nothing that captures the Joker's mission statement quite as well as leaving
behind dead bodies in his own image, creating a world with more Jokers.
For obvious reasons, the campy, kid-friendly 1966 Batman film didn't involve a lot of poison
murders.
When Heath Ledger offered up a performance that defined the Joker for a new generation,
his weapons of choice were knives, explosives, and complicated moral dilemmas, which left
very few people smiling.
The Suicide Squad Joker seems to favor guns and knives as well, which we know from the
scene where he's laying on the floor in a weird circle of them that also includes baby
clothes, champagne bottles, and a laptop.
It's definitely a striking visual in its own right, but it gets a little less sinister
once you start imagining Jared Leto spending hours arranging it all to get it just right.
One one level, you have to hand it to the cinematic versions of the Joker: they always
set their sights pretty big.
In Batman '89, the Joker attempts to poison the entirety of Gotham during the city's bicentennial,
using a deadly parade.
"My balloons.
Those are my balloons."
In The Dark Knight, he tries to trick a literal boatload of citizens into blowing themselves
up, and that's after a series of high-profile murders and the bombing of a hospital.
The Joker of Suicide Squad doesn't get much screen time, but it's already established
in Batman v Superman that he killed Robin.
Even in the '60s version, the Joker's part of a plot to vaporize every delegate to the
United Nations, at the height of the Cold War!
Of course, this isn't really a departure from the source material.
Since the '80s, the Joker's body count has been ramped up to the extreme, resulting in
a character who's only slightly less lethal than, say, the bubonic plague.
Even his attempt to take out the UN is something that would eventually make its way into the
comics as part of the "A Death in the Family" story, even if it's always overshadowed by
Robin being killed.
The thing is, that's not the only thing the Joker does.
While he has a long history of wild, theatrical murders, the Joker is also known for his unpredictability.
Sometimes he shows up and poisons everyone, and sometimes he applies for a patent on smiling
fish and only turns to murder once he's denied.
Sometimes he tries to become the first criminal to commit crimes on the moon.
A lot of those stories might result from his decades operating under the Comics Code, but
that bizarre unpredictability is what makes the Joker work as more than just a slasher
movie bad guy.
The Joker wasn't the first over-the-top, thematic crook to show up on the comics page, but if
you're looking for a place to draw the line between "villain" and "supervillain," he makes
a good place to start.
"...Wait'll they get a load of me.”
His arrival in Batman #1 set the standard for costumed criminals, and provided the blueprint
that supervillains are still using almost 80 years later.
More often than not, though, movies treat the Joker as just a slightly more colorful
representative of traditional organized crime.
While that was true for his first few appearances, Joker became far more than that.
In Batman '89, the Joker eventually winds up in full-on supervillain mode — complete
with an army of henchmen in matching satin jackets — but at heart, Jack Napier is a
gangster, and his first actions after his transformation involve taking over the mob.
The same goes for The Dark Knight, where the Joker's introduction involves him taking a
contract for the murder of Batman, eventually destabilizing the city's organized crime in
order to sow chaos.
"What do you propose."
"Well we kill the Batman.”
Suicide Squad might actually be the film that goes furthest, showing the Joker as a mob
boss, holding court in a nightclub that caters to facial tattoo enthusiasts.
Presumably, this is meant to tie the Joker to a more realistic idea of crime, which seems
pretty unnecessary.
Are audiences only going to accept a genocidal maniac who was turned into a clown by falling
into a pit of chemicals, who also fights a man dressed up as a human-sized bat, only
if we can relate him to The Sopranos?
This is a weird thing to say about the Joker, but sometimes, less is more.
Since his first live-action appearance in 1966, the design for the Joker in live action
has become more and more over the top.
From a visual standpoint, Jack Nicholson was a more-or-less accurate re-creation of what
we'd seen in the comics.
Heath Ledger combined the traditional purple suit with weird, studiously sloppy face-paint
and his infamous scars.
And Jared Leto… well, you know.
The guy has "damaged" tattooed on his forehead, and that is an aesthetic that doesn't even
exist in the same universe as the concept of subtlety.
While that particular take on the Joker is certainly memorable, it's not nearly as effective
as the relatively restrained Dark Knight version, and not even close to being as iconic as the
simpler Batman '89 style.
When there's too much to focus on from a visual standpoint, that visual loses its meaning
and just becomes a jumbled mess.
2019's Joker seems to be heading back in a slightly more restrained direction.
Joaquin Phoenix is back to the painted-on clown makeup, but with the colorful purple
suit that matches his comic book counterpart's established tradition pretty well.
From a structural standpoint, one of the biggest problems with the movie versions of the Joker
is more of a problem with movies themselves: they only really use him once.
While he's certainly great as a one-shot villain, the Joker is used best when he's a persistent
threat.
The idea that he's always out there, able to just stroll out of Arkham Asylum and begin
his next chaotic crime spree, is a really cool part of his character, just like it is
for any comic book supervillain.
You never know who's going to make their shocking return, or which mastermind might be manipulating
things from behind the scenes in order to make the hero's life a nightmare.
That's when the Joker works best — when his exit from the story is more ambiguous
than definitive, when no one finds the body, and when you know he'll be back for another
round.
"I think you and I are destined to do this forever."
Unfortunately, with the very recent exception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, movies are
meant to be more self-contained.
Having the Joker linger in the background while a movie focused on less popular and
marketable villains would make about as much sense as having Darkseid cooling his heels
offscreen while a C-list bad guy like Steppenwolf fought the Justice League in their first big-screen
outing.
Interestingly enough, there was a thought of doing this during the Dark Knight trilogy;
the Joker survives the events of the film, and the novelization for The Dark Knight Rises
even mentions that he is the last remaining inmate of Arkham Asylum.
Unfortunately, Heath Ledger's tragic real-life death prevented any of those plans from coming
to fruition, leaving his performance as a singular take on the Joker.
The Joker's scary.
He has to be, right?
He's the ultimate creepy clown, a mass murderer plotting death behind his smile, an unpredictable
foil for a hero determined to stop him at almost any cost.
In all honesty, the movies have that one down — the scene in Batman '89 where the Joker
unwraps his face and then shatters a mirror, laughing while a stammering doctor tries to
blame his work on a tray full of rusty tools?
That's still legitimately unsettling, and a high point of the film.
That said, there's one other thing the Joker ought to be: funny.
It really shouldn't be that difficult to pull off, since horror and comedy both rely on
a punch of surprise to get their reaction, but it's been a tricky balance for the movies
to walk.
The closest we've seen to nailing it is, once again, Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight.
"... hi."
Ledger's Joker pulls off great, genuinely funny bits of comedy in his performance without
ever losing that undercurrent of menace.
It's a necessary element, recasting Batman as the straight man in an unintentional comedy
partnership that usually ends with someone dead.
As for the others, well, Nicholson's version wound up being more weird than funny, and
Leto's… well, that performance was hilarious, but probably not in a way that was intentional.
Still, has to count for something, right?
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