After all these years, Mark Hamill’s respect for the Clown Prince of Crime endures, with the Batman: The Animated Series star recently giving props to the Joker for his New Year’s resolution.
The Twitter exchange started with a fan sharing a clip from The New Batman Adventures episode “Holiday Knights.” In this seasonal tale, the villain pledges to go a whole year without killing anyone, meaning that he’ll have to commit a lot of murders before the clock strikes midnight in order to get the habit out of his system. Hamill responded to the tweet by arguing that there’s something strangely principled about this approach to self-improvement:
“You gotta admire his commitment….
@2019Resolutions: 1- Decide what you want. 2- Make plans to achieve your goal. 3- Announce it to the world. 4- Execute your course of action that, hopefully, excludes executing anyone. #JokersHappyNewJeers”
Joker's New Year's Resolution 🃏🎉#Batman #90s #NewYearsResolution pic.twitter.com/DrKmA1fTcW
— 90sManiax (@90sManiax) December 30, 2018
While Hamill doesn’t reprise his second-most famous role quite so regularly these days, it’s clear that the actor still holds some affection for the Joker. Just last week, in fact, he reflected on the villain’s supposed death in 1993’s Batman: Mask of the Phantasm in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, observing how the Caped Crusader’s most famous foe has survived worse over the years:
“Sometimes you have to play the scene like he’s dying, but anyone that knows comics knows that he’ll never be completely dead. I was falling off bell towers, out of airplanes, I even landed in shark-infested waters. I thought it was funny when the mainstream media picked up on when they killed Superman in the comics. All of us comic fans laughed, we knew they were just rebooting it and wanted attention, but that made it on the evening news!”
Though Mask of the Phantasm was a box office flop at the time, both the film and Batman: The Animated Series are regularly singled out by fans as two of the finest works to bear the Dark Knight’s name, and Hamill’s take on the Joker has a lot to do with it. Of course, this year, the actor is a little more concerned with bringing back that other cherished character he’s known for playing, and you can expect the star to keep trolling his Twitter followers with Star Wars: Episode IX teases until the film hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.
