When I was a young man reading comic books, there were only two villains that ever genuinely scared me: Spider-Man's nemesis, the Green Goblin, and the Joker. The Joker was terrifying. A lot of people are a little bit unnerved by clowns. The Joker is what such people are afraid of. He transformed symbols of mirth into what biologists call warning colors: in this case, warnings of pure, homicidal malevolence. Most criminals, however ruthless, are at least moderated by the very vices that they serve. They want wealth, or power, or just like to bully people. In the worst case they get what they want and then hop in the get away car and beat it. The Joker, as Alfred puts in The Dark Knight, wants to see the world burn. And he wants to see souls burn along with bodies and buildings, and knows how to get the fire going. Put a little face paint on that, and you've got the greatest villain that DC Comics, or maybe anyone, ever invented. When Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) hands Batman the playing card, at the end of Batman Begins, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
No one has ever done the Joker justice on screen, until now. Caesar Romero in the 1966 series looked more like the comic book character than anyone else, but was about as scary as Barney the purple dinosaur. Jack Nicholson did the Joker with flair, but played the role for laughs rather than chills. The late Heath Ledger gave us the genuine article, all the way down to the existential horror that the
character represented. This interpretation was a work of pure genius.
It is a great tragedy for genre fans that Ledger died before the movie
even opened.
The Dark Knight is an extraordinary piece of film making. It blows its predecessor away, and Batman Begins was a very good movie. It succeeds in combining all the genuine elements of the comic book with a kind of seriousness and a feeling of plausibility that the other great superhero movies of recent years never come close to. The Joker has no super powers, nor any technological wonders at his disposal (unlike the Bat Man). His weapons bombs, guns, and a little knife that seems to have crawled out from scars that turn his lips into a permanent smile. Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Batman's quartermaster, all are superb.
The movie was not without glaring flaws. It was too long by a good half hour, with way too much time devoted to Batman racing from point A to point B, not fighting but just trying to avoid trash cans and concrete posts. A lot of plot elements were contrived, and a few were silly. They squeezed in a second villain from the comic series, and that was a little too clever.
It is also very dark, and some viewers will find it depressing. I did not. It presents genuine portraits of nobility in the face of evil that were more than one expects in such a context. Hollywood has figured out how to give us the kind of movie that superhero fans have longed dreamed of. If you like this sort of thing, don't miss The Dark Knight. But if you are afraid of clowns, beware.
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