Who IS The Joker? (Warning: minor "Dark Knight" plot spoilers)
Everyone's heard it, and it's true. The Dark Knight is one of the best movies of the year, and Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker is the primary reason (in a long list of reasons that this movie is awesome).
This is not the same Joker we've seen in previous movies, comic books or novels. He doesn't seem to have the same story.
Director Christopher Nolan and Ledger managed to create one of the most interesting and dynamic villains to ever hit the screen--yet we don't really learn that much about the Joker character in the movie. Who the heck IS he? What happened to his face? Why is he crazy? What hole did he crawl out of after the conclusion of Batman Begins?
He offered a couple (likely made up) explanations for his cut face--but nothing solid. They mention in the film that he has no DNA or finger-print record. He certainly has ties to Arkham Asylum. But seriously--he's a big mystery.
Who the heck is this guy? I wanna hear some theories.
--Jordan Thompson
David Ekman on July 20, 2008 at 05:37 PM
i haven't a clue
Nick Chodoba on July 20, 2008 at 05:53 PM
What I think the creators of The Dark Knight tried to do in the film is evoke the same mystery that was evident back when the Joker originally first appeared in Batman #1... He came out of the blue and was instantly labeled a master criminal, yet he had no back story or anything. This same template was used time and time again whenever the Joker appeared in a Batman comic... Even in "The Killing Joke" the origin suggested is undercut by the Joker himself who says: "I remember it differently every time.." I truly do feel that the Ledger Joker is an amalgam of ALL the Joker's prior to him, and a return to the mystery surrounding the original character in the Golden Age of comics...
Egads on July 20, 2008 at 08:54 PM
Perhaps the abandoned child of Dr. Thomas Wayne and his FIRST wife by a secret marriage, the ballerina Celine Varens, who became criminally insane and died in a fire she set at the Gotham Asylum six months after commitment. Her prematurely-born infant son, AKA The Joker, was severely injured and scarred when the conflagration reached the Asylum Nursery, setting his oxygen-filled incubator ablaze. Dr. Thomas Wayne, fearing Celine's madness might be hereditary, that the sudden oxygen-deprivation and trauma may have caused irreparable brain-damage to his and Celine's son, and that the whole sordid affair would ruin his courtship of Martha Kane, spent millions in only partially successful attempts to restore the child's appearance and ultimately anonymously abandoned the boy to the untender mercies of the Gotham Social Welfare Department... ;)
Hence, unknown to both, Batman and The Joker are half-brothers. DNA tests have failed to reveal this connection for the simple reason that Bruce Wayne has made certain his own DNA remains unregistered in any data bank, to insure any accidental trace DNA left by the Batman cannot lead back to Wayne.
Rick on July 20, 2008 at 09:03 PM
The Joker in The Dark Knight is the personification of pure evil...there is no trying to understand his human side (like Hannible Lecter), see the pain that is within him (a la Gollum), see the world from their pained point of view (Darth Vader) or some other Psych 101 BS that would make you pity the antagonist of a film...The Joker is pure, unadulterated evil...the epitome of all that is bad and hurtful (and yet, the most incredible thing, you actually LOVE HIM!!!)...a true sociopath who just "loves to watch the world burn"...
What is he? Where does he come from? Why this, how come that...it doesn't matter...what we see on screen is the pen-ultimate extremist of a villain...
Egads on July 20, 2008 at 09:23 PM
Post Script: the abandoned child's actual birth name was Jacques Varens; 'The Joker' was the nickname applied by his fellow residents in a series of foster care homes during his early years, when he had to continuously apply a white skin cream to his entire body to allow his scar tissue to expand (albeit with great pain) as he grew. He disappeared from the Gotham area at the age of 13, after killing the entire foster family he was living with at the time. Subsequent police investigations failed to disclose the whereabouts and fate of Jacques Varens, but suggested the possibility of severe physical, psychological and sexual abuse by his last foster family...
tyler on July 21, 2008 at 09:36 AM
The comic book specifically leaves the Joker's identity unknown to add to the mystery of his character. Instead of being an individual, the Joker is a symbol of evil in anyone and its recklessness in many regards. The Joker seems to be a man who's sanity is either: a) so far gone its unrepairable, or b) so sane that traditional standards of sanity cannot keep pace. You see both ideas throughout the movie (the insanity in his carelessness for human life, and the super-sanity for his theory of society's structure and their "rules")
David Horiuchi on July 21, 2008 at 09:48 AM
I think the ambiguity strengthens the movie. One of the traditional weaknesses of the first movie in a superhero series has been explaining the "origin" of the hero. Trying to explain the Joker would have bogged down the flow.
Kenneth Brown on July 21, 2008 at 10:38 AM
One clue about his past that hasn't been mentioned yet is when the Joker is first mentioned, at the very end of Batman Begins. Gordan shows Batman a file that has a Joker's card and he says that he's wanted for double homicide.
Who did the Joker kill? His parents perhaps?
And I'd have to disagree with the Joker representing pure evil. He is distinctly the opposite of Batman, who had to become a little evil himself in order to defeat the Joker (invasion of privacy, disrespect of laws, attacking SWAT teams, letting his love die, etc.)
Also, I believe the movie was trying to deliver the message that the Joker was created because of Batman. The analogy that when cops start wearing bullet-proof vests, then the criminals will buy armor piercing bullets (and a few others) and how that relates to if someone is going to be a masked vigilante then that is going to create a new breed of villain. The Joker is just the first (or second if you count Scarecrow) of this new breed of villain.
Jordan on July 21, 2008 at 10:41 AM
I have to agree with ya, David. Not only did it strengthen the movie, but it allows to get nerdy and try to fill in the gaps ourselves.
Brad L. Wooldridge on July 21, 2008 at 12:17 PM
I suppose that the filmmakers, as well as the Joker's creators, wanted to make the Clown Prince of Crime deliberately and literally a "wild card," of whom we know nothing about. The exact opposite of the Batman, of whom we basically know everything. This further makes the Joker the flipside of the coin that he and the Darknight Detective sit upon. Luckily, Nolan and Co. eschewed anything and everything established in '89's "Batman," which portrayed Jack Nicholson's Joker as the murderer of Bruce Wayne's parents. That was not a part of Sam Hamm's excellent original screenplay, as were many other things, like Alfred letting Vicki Vale into the Batcave. That, along with the climatic cathedral showdown, were added by director Tim Burton and screenwriter Warren Skaaren, along with input from hack producer John Peters and star Jack Nicholson. "Batman Begins" changed nearly everything for the better, and "The Dark Knight" continued to mold the legend of the Batman with the respect, reverence, and realism that the World's Greatest Detective deserves after nearly seventy years of existence.
Fancy Pants on July 22, 2008 at 06:05 AM
I loved the movie, but I don't have a theory about The Joker's origin. I have to disagree with the point that The Joker of the film is one we've never seen in the comics. I think the reason so many Batman fans are responding so well to the film is because Nolan and Ledger understood The Joker of "A Death in the Family," "The Killing Joke," and "The Dark Knight Returns." The character, when he's written well, is not a clownish prankster but a horrifying manifestation of evil. Maybe that's why Nolan didn't give Joker a back story; where does evil come from?
Geek on June 21, 2009 at 02:13 PM
The name Celine Varens is lifted directly from Charlotte Bronte's 1847 protofeminist novel, Jane Eyre - she's Rochester's good-time girl in the 1830s. The link of this work to Henry James' gothic horror story The Turn of the Screw was deliberately developed further by the English homosexual composer Benjamin Britten in the 1950s to bring out an underlying theme of paedophilic child abuse, and the roots are in some of the greatest diabolicism of real history - the tales of Bluebeard and Ruggieri are directly involved in acts which continue to this day.