Joker (The Dark Knight)

Heath Ledger portrays the role of The Joker, the main antagonist in the movie The Dark Knight, the second film in Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy.

The Joker's existence is hinted at the end of the 2005 film Batman Begins, where Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) reveals the existence of an armed robber/killer who leaves Joker playing cards at scenes of his crimes. He later appears as the main antagonist of the 2008 sequel, The Dark Knight, portrayed by Heath Ledger, who told Sarah Lyall of The New York Times that he viewed that film's version of the character as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy. More like Hannibal Lecter then Ronald McDonald."^[1]

Costume designer Lindy Hemming described the Joker's look as reflecting his personality, in that "he doesn't care about himself at all"; she avoided designing him as a vagrant, but still made him appear to be "scruffier, grungier," so that "when you see him move, he's slightly twitchier or edgy."^[2][3][3] Nolan noted, "We gave a Francis Bacon spin to [his face]. This corruption, this decay in the texture of the look itself. It's grubby. You can almost imagine what he smells like."^[4] In creating the "anarchical" look of the Joker, Hemming drew inspiration from such countercultural pop culture artists as Pete Doherty, Iggy Pop, and Johnny Rotten.^[5] Ledger described his "clown" mask, made up of three pieces of stamped silicone, as a "new technology," taking less than an hour for the make-up artists to apply, much faster than more-conventional prosthetics usually requires. Ledger also said that he felt he was barely wearing any make-up.^{[2][6] [7]}

Unlike most incarnations, where his appearance is a result of chemical bleaching, this Joker sports a Glasgow smile, and accentuates it through unevenly applied make-up and dyed green hair. During the course of the film, he tells conflicting stories about how he acquired the scars, which involve child abuse and self-mutilation. He carves Glasgow smiles into some of his victims' faces as well, in lieu of the post-mortem smiles created by Joker venom.

Hemming and Ledger's Joker design has had an impact in popular and political culture in the form of the Barack Obama "Joker" poster, and has since become a meme in its own right.^[8]

Before Ledger was confirmed to play the Joker in July 2006, Paul Bettany,^[9] Lachy Hulme,^[10] Adrien Brody,^[11] Steve Carell,^[12] and Robin Williams^[13] publicly expressed interest in the role. However Nolan had wanted to work with Ledger on a number of projects in the past (though he had been unable to do so), and was agreeable to Ledger's chaotic interpretation of the character.^[14] When Ledger saw Batman Begins, he had realized a way to make the character work that was consistent with the film's tone:^[15] He described his Joker as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy."^[1] Throughout the film, the Joker states his desire to upset social order through crime, and comes to define himself by his conflict with Batman. To prepare for the role, Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character's posture, voice, and personality, and kept a diary, in which he recorded the Joker's thoughts and feelings.^[2][3] While he initially found it difficult, Ledger eventually generated a voice unlike Jack Nicholson's character in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film.^[1][3] He was also given Batman: The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which he "really tried to read and put it down."^[15] Ledger also cited A Clockwork Orange and Sid Vicious as "a very early starting point for Christian [Bale] and I. But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether."^[16][17] "There's a bit of everything in him. There's nothing that consistent," Ledger said, and added, "There are a few more surprises to him."^[16] Ledger was allowed to shoot and mostly direct the videos the Joker sends out as warnings. Each take Ledger made was different from the last. Nolan was impressed enough with the first video shoot that he chose to not be present when Ledger shot the video with a kidnapped reporter (Anthony Michael Hall).^[18] On January 22, 2008, after he had completed filming The Dark Knight, Ledger died of an accidental prescription drug overdose, leading to intense press attention and memorial tributes. "It was tremendously emotional, right when he passed, having to go back in and look at him every day [during editing]," Nolan recalled. "But the truth is, I feel very lucky to have something productive to do, to have a performance that he was very, very proud of, and that he had entrusted to me to finish."^[17] All of Ledger's scenes appear as he completed them in the filming; in editing the film, Nolan added no "digital effects" to alter Ledger's actual performance posthumously.^[19] Nolan has dedicated the film in part to Ledger's memory.^[20][21]

Unlike the previous film and comic-book depictions of the Joker, this one eschews gag-based weapons common to the character, in favor of knives, firearms, and an array of explosive devices. He starts out a bank robber, who offers to kill Batman for the mafia. It is eventually revealed that the Joker sees himself as an "agent of chaos" and comes to define himself by his conflict with Batman. The Joker is also responsible for the death of Bruce Wayne's childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Harvey Dent's (Aaron Eckhart) transformation into Two-Face;^[22] he rigs a trap in which Rachel is killed and Dent is disfigured, and then convinces the traumatized Dent to seek revenge on the mob and the police.

At the climax of the film, the Joker has placed bombs on board two evacuation ships, one containing prisoners of Gotham City's penitentiary, and the other containing ordinary citizens. The Joker places detonators on both boats, threatening to destroy them both at midnight if one does not destroy the other. He also holds several hostages at a tower where he is observing the ships. Batman subdues Joker's henchmen and eventually faces the Joker himself just as both ships refuse to destroy each other as the Joker's deadline expires, Batman grimly informing the Joker that he is alone in his corruption and insanity. Although Batman captures the Joker, Joker gloats that the people of Gotham will lose hope once they learn of Two-Face's homicidal rampage. After Two-Face's death, Batman takes responsibility for Two-Face's crimes so that people will remember Harvey Dent as a hero and keep all his convictions from being overturned.

The character is briefly mentioned in the novelization of The Dark Knight Rises as being "locked away as Arkham’s sole remaining inmate. Or perhaps he had escaped. Nobody was really sure."^[23] The Joker was not mentioned in the film itself, out of respect for Ledger.^[24]

To prepare for the role, Ledger told Empire,

"I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices – it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath – someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts"; after reiterating his view of the character as "just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown", he added that Nolan had given him "free rein" to create the role, which he found "fun, because there are no real boundaries to what the Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke."^[2]

Ledger's portrayal of the Joker was widely praised by critics and audiences alike. On February 22, 2009, Ledger posthumously won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.^[25] He was the fourth actor to be nominated for the portrayal of a comic strip/comic book/graphic novel character (the others being Al Pacino in Dick Tracy, Paul Newman in Road to Perdition, and William Hurt in A History of Violence), and the first to win.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times describes The Dark Knight as a "haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy." He praises the performances, direction, and writing, and says the film "redefine[s] the possibilities of the comic-book movie." Ebert states that the "key performance" is by Heath Ledger, and pondered whether he would become the first posthumous Academy Award-winning actor since Peter Finch in 1976. Ledger ultimately won the Oscar.^[26] Ebert named it one of his twenty favorite films of 2008.^[27] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writes that the film is deeper than its predecessor, with a "deft" script that refuses to scrutinize the Joker with popular psychology, instead pulling the viewer in with an examination of Bruce Wayne's psyche.^[28] Travers has praise for all the cast, saying each brings his or her "'A' game" to the film. He says Bale is "electrifying," evoking Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II, and that Eckhart's portrayal of Harvey Dent is "scarily moving."^[28] Travers says the actor moves the Joker away from Jack Nicholson's interpretation into darker territory, and expresses his support for any potential campaign to have Ledger nominated for an Academy Award,^[28] Travers says that the filmmakers move the film away from comic book cinema and closer to being a genuine work of art, citing Nolan's direction and the "gritty reality" of Wally Pfister's cinematography as helping to create a universe that has something "raw and elemental" at work within it. In particular, he cites Nolan's action choreography in the IMAX-tailored heist sequence as rivaling that of Heat (1995).^[28] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote "Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind."^[29] Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Every great hero needs a great villain. And in 2008, Christian Bale's Batman found his in Heath Ledger's demented dervish, the Joker."^[30]

Emanuel Levy wrote Ledger "throws himself completely" into the role,^[31] and that the film represents Nolan's "most accomplished and mature" work, and the most technically impressive and resonant of all the Batman films. Levy calls the action sequences some of the most impressive seen in an American film for years, and talks of the Hong Kong-set portion of the film as being particularly visually impressive.^[31] Levy and Peter Travers conclude that the film is "haunting and visionary,"^[28][31] while Levy goes on to say that The Dark Knight is "nothing short of brilliant."^[31] On the other hand, David Denby of The New Yorker said that the story is not coherent enough to properly flesh out the disparities. He said the film's mood is one of "constant climax," and that it feels rushed and far too long. Denby criticized scenes which he argued to be meaningless or are cut short just as they become interesting.^[32] Denby remarks that the central conflict is workable, but that "only half the team can act it," saying that Bale's "placid" Bruce Wayne and "dogged but uninteresting" Batman is constantly upstaged by Ledger's "sinister and frightening" performance, which he says is the film's one element of success. Denby concludes that Ledger is "mesmerising" in every scene.^[32] The vocalization of Christian Bale's Batman (which was partly altered during post-production) was the subject of particular criticism by some commentators, with David Edelstein from NPR describing Bale delivering his performance with "a voice that's deeper and hammier than ever". Alonso Duralde at MSNBC, however, referred to Bale's voice in The Dark Knight as an "eerie rasp", as opposed to the voice used in the Batman Begins, which according to Duralde "sounded absurdly deep, like a 10-year-old putting on an ‘adult’ voice to make prank phone calls".^[33][34]

The Joker, on the other hand, is seen as the representation of anarchy and chaos. He has no motive, no orders, and no desires but to cause havoc and "watch the world burn." The terrible logic of human error is another theme as well. The ferry scene displays how humans can easily be enticed by iniquity.^[35]

Most notable among the nominations were Heath Ledger's almost complete sweep of over twenty awards for acting, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Nolan dedicated the film in part to Ledger's memory, as well as to the memory of technician Conway Wickliffe, who was killed during a car accident while preparing one of the film's stunts.^[20]

Even film critic David Denby, who does not praise the film overall in his pre-release review in The New Yorker, evaluates Ledger's work highly, describing his performance as both "sinister and frightening" and Ledger as "mesmerising in every scene", concluding: "His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss."^[36]

Ledger received numerous awards for his Joker role in The Dark Knight. On 10 November 2008, he was nominated for two People's Choice Awards related to his work on the film, "Best Ensemble Cast" and "Best Onscreen Match-Up" (shared with Christian Bale), and Ledger won an award for "Match-Up" in the ceremony aired live on CBS in January 2009.^[37]

On 11 December 2008, it was announced that Ledger had been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight; he subsequently won the award at the 66th Golden Globe Awards ceremony telecast on NBC on 11 January 2009 with Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan accepting on his behalf.^[38][39]

Film critics, co-stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Caine and many of Ledger's colleagues in the film community joined Bale in calling for and predicting a nomination for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in recognition of Ledger's achievement in The Dark Knight.^[40] Ledger's subsequent nomination was announced on 22 January 2009, the anniversary of his death;^[41] Ledger went on to win the award, becoming the second person to win a posthumous Academy Award for acting, after fellow Australian actor Peter Finch, who won for 1976's Network. The award was accepted by Ledger's family.^[42]

Ledger's death affected the marketing campaign for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008)^[43] and also both the production and marketing of Terry Gilliam's film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, with both directors intending to celebrate and pay tribute to his work in these films.^{[43][44][45][17]}