Batman Begins, as far as I care, is the single best Batman Movie to have ever been made. They made the Batman what he once was, a dark brooding detective, not a happy go lucky idiot in tights. Granted, the Batmobile was strange, but everything else about the movie was beyond anything that has been released in the past.So after seeing it numerous times and hearing they’re making a second one years ago I was, as most would be, thrilled. Then they released a cast list, and I saw Heath Ledger as the joker. Heath Ledger?! One of the cowboys from Brokeback Mountain? I almost cried… well not really, but I wasn’t too happy. I thought about it though, and the more I thought the less I cared.
Here we are now, 2007, the Dark Knight(the title for the next Batman movie) a few months away, and we’re seeing some actual pictures of the Joker. Not a Photoshopped picture, like you will get for googling “Joker Dark Knight”, but full make up of Heath Ledger as the joker and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. Both pictures revealed via a Viral Marketing website set up by Warner Brothers.
At first we’re given a Political picture of Harvey Dent, poised like a classic patriotic superhero, but with a fake smile added. The picture dissolves and we see a disturbing mugshot of a man wearing white face paint and a large smile made with two grotesque scars on each side of his face. This is the joker, and he scares the crap out of me.
Now after this was released many people complained, and I understand why. Everyone thinks of a normal man with green hair, white face paint, and a lot of ivory because of his abnormally large smile. This is understandable, that’s how he’s portrayed in every TV show, Comic book, Cartoon show, Video game, and just about everything else. I on the other hand like the appearance, let me tell you why.
The Joker is utterly bonkers. There’s not a single sane bone in his body. If there were he’d remove it himself and make a toy out of it. A man of the Joker’s insanity isn’t going to strike fear in the hearts of anyone with clown paint on their face and plastic surgery, at least not in the real world. The new Batman movies are realistic, and because of that the Jack Nicholson Joker isn’t going to work. This joker is beyond criminally insane, and the best visual way to show that is through(one can assume) self mutilation.
It may be out of the norm, and extremely scary, but isn’t that what one of the Batman’s biggest enemies should be? Scary and out of the norm? Even if you don’t like it consider how they made Venom look in Spiderman 3, and we don’t want another Venom do we?