Batman Begins Again

Was Jack's performance as Joker really that bad? I thought he did a great job given what they wanted him to do. I thought he did a good job as Joker as did Carey as Riddler, IMO.

 

It's great for people who aren't passionate about the comics, but not for people who are, especially the Frank Miller (Batman: Year One, etc.) and Alan Moore (The Killing Joke, etc.) stuff. It's not true to that version of the Joker, which is what those people really want to see and is supposedly what we're going to get in The Dark Knight. The Joker is a mysterious fucking psycho in those books, but also has depth. Nicholson was a caricature of that, an enjoyable one for most people, but fraudulent to the passionate fans.

 

It's not so much that he did a bad job. He was playing a character vastly different from the one in the comics, who was much scarier and more well-developed.

 

I look forward to seeing Joker as bitter psycho killer. He's not a funny man, he's a scary dude who kills indiscriminately.

And Batman has trouble figuring him out.

My hope is that Gyllenhall's character is there to be killed off. Let's really plunge Batman into the depths, walking the line between psycho and sane.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jokerkillingjoke.png

This is from The Killing Joke and what people want.


I tried to put the pic right in there but it's just a red X. Don't know how to fix it.

 

The Joker amuses himself, basically, doing things he finds funny but are terrifying to everyone else.

And I agree on the Gyllenhaal thing. Batman and the Joker need each other once their relationship is established. They really do create each other, just not in the Tim Burton, convenient for a movie plot kind of way.

 

I think these are the most serious posts I've ever made here, and they're on a Batman thread. I don't know what that says about me, but I like it.

 

Aye, verily, we have a true comic fan!

 

That would be nice. Bale can definitely do insane well.

 

As a casual fan of the Batbooks (pick one up every couple months, but not every month), I thought Nicholson nailed the Joker. Maybe not the hardest of hardcore Joker takes, but the one most people could identify with. And it was plenty far away from the TV show the baby boomers remembered.
There were plenty of scenes in the first movie, especially when he's just starting out as the Joker, where Nicholson was malevolent and creepy as hell. The part with Jack Palance's character, the board room scene where he electrocutes the mobster and the scene where he walks up on the other mobster at city hall and stabs him with the pen, just to name a few.
Also loved the alley scene before he became the Joker, when the bad cop pulls the gun on him. Just sitting there with the Joker grin already and all the confidence in the world, saying "Better be sure."

 

Yes, but Batman would NEVER use a gun, as the Keaton Batman did.

 

That's only because the original Batman stories have been forgotten. I know way too much about this shit.

I really don't think Nicholson was bad. That's just not the interpretation of the character I like best and it certainly doesn't fit if this is going to be a more grounded story like the one in Batman Begins.