The Joker will always have the last laugh… Crown Prince of Crime’s reigns of screen terror continues

Every hero needs a nemesis.

Bond has Blofeld, Doctor Who has the Daleks, and Batman has the greatest comic-book baddie of them all – the Joker.

He appeared in the very first edition of the Batman comic back in 1940 and this week, a new movie featuring the Clown Prince of Crime hits our cinemas, and it continues the trend for ever-darker depictions of the Joker on screen.

To describe the Joker, we’re best asking the man who’s played him more often than anyone, Mark Hamill.

Best known as Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, Hamill’s also a hugely successful voice actor and one of his greatest creations was that of the Joker, who he voiced in dozens of episodes of the various animated Batman series in the 1990s and 2000s.

Hamill admits: “When I got the job my elation quickly evaporated as I agonised over the enormous responsibility I had undertaken.

“He is among the greatest villains in history and I was terrified of disappointing his huge legion of fans.

“What is it about the Joker that has kept audiences spellbound for more than 70 years? Is it because he’s insane and therefore unpredicatable?

“He may be crazy but he’s never boring. He’s a gleeful, psychopathic genius!”

© Allstar/WARNER/DC COMICS

The new flick Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix as Mr J – this fella has many nicknames, including the Harlequin Of Hate – and he’s a troubled soul, to be sure.

The fact the great Martin Scorsese was attached to the picture as a co-producer until other commitments lured him away is telling as this movie has lots in common with a couple of the Mafia movie maestro’s classic films from the 1970s including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and, in particular, The King Of Comedy.

In Joker, Robert De Niro portrays a talk-show host who plays a pivotal role in the downfall of Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up with mental health issues who turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City.

Indeed, De Niro has admitted that his role pays homage to his character in The King Of Comedy, Rupert Pupkin, a struggling comedian who becomes obsessed with Jerry Lewis’s talk-show host.

The film is based on the graphic novel The Killing Joke which depicts the Joker as a failed stand-up because writer and director Todd Phillips found the original origin story in which the character is an underworld hoodlum disfigured by falling into a vat of acid too unrealistic.

Explaining that he’d picked and chosen what bits he liked from the killer clown’s comic book history, Phillips said: “We’re not even doing Joker, but the story of becoming Joker.

“It’s just another interpretation, like people do interpretations of Macbeth.”

Apparently Phoenix, a bit of a method actor, would walk off set during filming because he’d lost self-control and needed to compose himself, and De Niro says he was “very intense in what he as doing, as it should be”.

And that’s in stark contrast to the Joker’s very first screen incarnation.

© Allstar / ABC

In the daft, high-camp Batman TV series and spin-off films of the ’60s – all BIFF! and KAPOW! Graphics that punctuated Batman’s punches and kicks – Cesar Romero’s gag-obsessed gangster was as far removed from today’s tortured villains as it’s possible to be, more of a mischief-obsessed huckster.

Famed for playing a string of Latin lovers, Romero refused to shave off his trademark moustache and so the Joker’s white facepaint was simply smeared over the top of it.

But he threw himself into the part with glee and originated many of the characteristics now associated with Mr J – his maniacal “Whoop! Whoop!” laugh, the alternating pitch of his voice and his twitchy excitement.

Combined with a clown’s red mouth, green hair, purple suit – all sported by every subsequent Joker – Romero was quite unnerving and his Clown Prince was included on the list of the 60 Nastiest Villains Of All Time.

The next man to wear the grin was none other than Jack Nicholson, for many THE Joker, at least until Heath Ledger’s even more unhinged version came shambling along.

Batman had been off our screens for decades until Michael Keaton donned the cowl and rebooted the brand, and who better to help relaunch the Caped Crusader than his devious arch enemy?

Nicholson was the first to pluck what parts he wanted from Joker’s history, which the film tweaked by revealing him as the gunman who shot Bruce Wayne – the future Batman’s – parents.

© Allstar/WARNER BROS.

He retained Romero’s giggling, scenery-chewing showmanship but also added more than a dash of the brooding malevolence that was being increasingly seen in comic books, which had lost their childish innocence.

It has to be said, our Jack had a high ol’ time playing the Joker, so much so that when shooting finished, he used some of his $6 million fee to buy all of his character’s flamboyant costumes.

The success of the film spawned the rather brilliant TV cartoons – Batman obsessed Shaw Jr had every DVD so I became quite the fan.

A self-confessed comic book nerd, Hamill says of dreaming up his version of Joker: “I was told, ‘Don’t think Nicholson’.

“I managed to conjure up my version of the ‘Grim Jester’, a sort of cross between Claude Rains and the Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine!”

It took until 2008 for Mr J to grace the big screen again but, boy, was he everywhere.

The marketing campaign plastered his massive, sinister smile on posters bearing the tagline, “Why so serious?” which could have been seen as an ironic comment on the ever-darker Batman films Christopher Nolan was making.

The late Heath Ledger was so good as Joker in the second of those, The Dark Knight, that he won a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Ledger said of his astonishing performance: “I locked myself away in a hotel room for six weeks. I just formulated a voice and a posture and found a real psychology behind the Joker.”

He even kept a diary written in the Joker’s hand, noting down things that would make him laugh.

When Christian Bale gave way to Ben Affleck as Batman, Jared Leto was cast as Joker and his take was a more virile, excessively fabulous loon obsessed with “thug life” stereotypes; think Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface but with tattoos and metal teeth grills.

He apparently stayed in character on set – that must have been fun for his co-stars, not – and it’s been said Leto is rather unhappy with the new film as he doesn’t like the idea of multiple contemporary Joker characters.

But he should remember no one ever owns that lunatic grin, they just wear it for a while then pass it on…

---

The Joker (15) is in cinemas from Friday October 4.