More evil: Ledger's Joker or Nicholson's? (Long analyzing post)
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Marvel/DC
npiazza91 — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 04:21 AM)
A lot of people say that Ledger's Joker was more "evil", and more "random" than Nicholson's, but I strongly disagree.
Ledger's Joker was carefully calculated, everything was planned by him, he had a goal of "sending a message" to everyone and to bring down those that were good to a place of madness. Now, don't get me wrong, everything about Ledger's Joker makes him an evil person. Buthis acts seemed almostemotional. He constantly talked about his bad past, whether these stories are true or not doesn't matter, he obviously has some sort of trauma that he is aware of. He wants to be in the spotlight and have people notice him. He has a clear goal on a large scale. Anarchist is the right word, but I would even go a bit further and say that he comes across as someone who was bullied and taken advantage of by many people, and this is his "revenge" so to speak. of course, it's just a theory, but in my opinion he seems less of a true sociopath and more of a guy with severe trauma issues ranging from PTSD to Multiple Personality Disorder. He obviously has a broad understanding of human psychology as he often uses this against his victims. But I do think he was an outcast all his life that was ridiculed by everyone around him. His attacks and goals are way more emotionally driven than someone who is a true psychopath. You can also tell by the way he speakshe speaks with an intensity that almost comes off as passion. Along the way he nearly becomes obsessed with Batman, in a way that suggests that Batman was someone he wishes he could have been. All of his speeches in the film, including his last one seem to be said because he wants people to hear him. He wants everyone to hear what he has to say and put him in the spotlight. If you noticed, Ledger's Joker also doesn't find much particularly funny, and I think it's because he is a sad, sad man on the inside. I think "The Joker" was an alternate personality he came up with to escape his past so he doesn't have to emotionally deal with ita way to reinvent himself, so to speak. He wants to bring Batman and everyone else "down to his level" because his trauma caused him to believe that there were no good people in the world, which is why I believe he started his reign of terror in the first place. He wanted to prove this to the world. He didn't scream when he was falling to his death because he actually wanted to die. Yeah, he's a crazy psychopath, but truly evil? Compared to other serial killers and psychos, I don't think so. Not that I feel bad for him at all, but he comes off as more sad than evil to me.
Nicholson's Joker, on the other hand, just screams pure evil to me. First off, Jack was a murderer even before he became the Joker. As the Joker, he isn't concerned with sending a message to the people, or really doing anything on a large scale at all except simply messing with them for his own amusement. Ledger's Joker didn't do things "for fun", Nicholson's Joker does everything for fun. This is a guy who gets kicks from killing his own associates, this is a guy who speaks to dead people because he gets a rise out of it, this is a guy who finds death itself absolutely hilarious. In fact, he finds everything hilarious. This Joker is not a sad person, in fact he is ecstatic with everything. Batman is not something to be obsessed with, but something to have fun with, just like everything else. He speaks with glee, he makes jokes for his own amusement and he does many terrible things "just because". This Joker is random, unpredictable and truly has no bounds. In my opinion, while Ledger's Joker may be more interesting to watch as far as story goes, Nicholson's Joker is a lot more evil, and I can't think of too many villains who are as evil as him. -
movibiju — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 09:30 AM)
The Heath Ledger's joker is more related with the Joker of the killing joke mixed with real psychopaths. In the killing joke, the Joker was this broken man who eventually turned to the world of crime and jumped in a vat of chemicals and became the Joker.
Both jokers were there to create dynamics and problems and see how the world and Batman respond to them, but the joker of Heath ledger was more explicit in his purposes because made clear to the audience that he wanted to see how the world and Batman respond to the chaos and problems he created.
He wanted to see everybody without their masks, not only Batman. Because it is in the struggles, in the challenges, and in the suffering where people reveal who they really are inside and in the end they all showed who they really were behind their social masks, especially Harvey Dent who the Joker exposed the true self : a two-faced person.
Is it better imdb? -
clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 10:07 AM)
I don't think you can make a rational argument for why one is more evil than the other. I think Ledger's Joker was much scarier in that he was more mysterious, harder to quantify. We know too much about Nicholson's Joker, and he scares too easy at the end. Ledger's Joker actually wants Batman to kill him.
But which Joker is the most evil?
Cesar Romero's.
No contest. -
TheFatDruidofNacyl — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 10:42 AM)
The fact that Nicholson's joker thought he was simply trying to create Art with his killings, instead of trying to teach people a message, I find him more evil and crazy. I do think that each Joker does fit the universe that was created for them.
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clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 10:50 AM)
That's a fair pointtwo different interpretations.
But I don't think Burton's movie executed its vision as well as Nolan's, overall.
And I don't believe Ledger's Joker is trying to teach anybody anything. I think he just wants to see the world burn. -
TheFatDruidofNacyl — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 10:51 AM)
Well he wants to prove that he can turn people that are supposed to be good into him. He fails with the boats but wins with Two Face.
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clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 11:10 AM)
I take him seriously when he says he's like a dog chasing a car, and wouldn't know what to do if he caught it. He has no clear agenda, he just wants to create chaos. Batman wants order. So there's a clear dichotomy there.
With the Burton film, it wasn't so clear-cutJoker's just a criminal to him, and criminals killed his parents, and then it turned out Joker killed his parents before he was Joker (which was a dumb twist). The order vs. chaos thing is there, but not very well delineated.
I actually prefer Batman Returns to the first BatmanI thought Bruce and Selina were a great duo (with DeVito in-between), whereas Keaton and Nicholson never really meshed. -
TheFatDruidofNacyl — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 11:18 AM)
In order for the Ledger's Joker to pull off what he did, he would have had to not only have a plan but a detailed plan with backups to that plan. Both Joker's wanted to spread anarchy, but for different motivations.
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clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 11:40 AM)
No, I don't agree. He improvises in response to how others react to his actions. He never had a plan that said "I'm going to end up on top of a building fighting Batman while people on two boats blow each other up." He made it up as he went along. That's much more believable than the usual Supervillain master plan that is too impossibly contrived, and seems to depend on the hero NOT getting killed until the very end, even though there are ample opportunities for that to happen.
I agree Nicholson's Joker sees himself as some kind of artist (it's not a point the movie makes subtly), but how does that make him Batman's opposite? Batman isn't opposed to art. Bruce Wayne collects art. -
TheFatDruidofNacyl — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 12:22 PM)
In order for everything to have worked out the way it did, he couldn't have made it up as he goes. It is a great plan but still a plan.
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clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 01:09 PM)
Sure he could. The hard part to believe is that he can get all these guys to follow him, when he's killing them right and left (but that's also true of Nicholson's Joker, who summarily executes one of his most loyal followers, in public, for no reason).
But once he's got the people, and the dynamite, and the gasoline, he can just riff. Like he didn't know he was going to say "I'm going to kill people until Batman gives himself up" until he did it. He said "Kill The Batman!" then he decided he never wanted to kill Batman, because he's too much fun.
I think most of what he did, he didn't know he was going to do it until a day or two before he did, at most. Sometimes mere hours. His basic plan was there from the start, but it was almost infinitely adaptable.
Now the plan in the next Nolan Batman movie was just flat-out stupid, and dependent on a whole lot of things happening just so, which was one of the reasons that movie isn't as good. -
TheFatDruidofNacyl — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 01:11 PM)
We can both agree on the third movie. I am actually a fan of the first two Nolan batman movies, just don't like the third one.
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clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 01:15 PM)
I liked Hathaway's Catwoman a lotbest one ever. I liked a lot of individual moments in the movie. But I think losing Ledger really knocked Nolan off-balance, and he made terrible choices for the final villains. Bane SUCKS.
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TheFatDruidofNacyl — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 01:17 PM)
Like Ledger's Joker, I did feel Hathaway's Catwoman did fit that universe well. Bane sucked, especially when he starts out as the master villain that takes down Batman to a love sick bodyguard. I could complain about other things but don't want to go on a rant.
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TheFatDruidofNacyl — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 11:25 AM)
I liked both versions because they brought a different style to fit the feel of each movie.
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clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 11:41 AM)
I thought Nicholson was basically playing himselfas he did in most of his movies by that point in his career. Not his real self, but his public image, this general Jack Nicholson character he did in movie after movie, only more psychotic and with face paint in this one.
And that worked. I mean, he's the only actor people ever heard was cast to play The Joker and they all said "Of course!"
But that doesn't make him the best. Just the most obvious. -
clyons — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 12:16 PM)
But that's my pointhe'd already played this character. Many times before. He'd done The Shining almost ten years earlier (and it's a much better scarier more powerful performance).
Ledger came up with his Joker from scratchso did Romero, so did Hamill (of course they only had to do the voice). If you ONLY listened to the audio you wouldn't know it was them, even if you knew their other work very well.
Whereas if you had no idea who played Joker in this movie, and you just listened to the soundtrack, you'd say "It's Jack!" He made no attempt to create a new voice. He's playing his standard psycho killer character, which isn't all that different really from his standard romantic comedy character.