When it comes the Joker, DC’s iconic villain, two names typically come to mind first: Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix. Not only are these the two most recent stars to play the villain in a major way, but they’re also the best.
Ledger first brought the clown prince of crime to life on screen in Christopher Nolan’s uber-popular Batman sequel The Dark Knight in 2008, and quickly became many DC fans’ favorite Joker. A whole decade later, Joaquin Phoenix debuted in the role of Todd Philips’ unique, dark, and violent take on the character.
While there was quite an extended break between their appearances, there may be an alternate timeline where Phoenix debuted in the role during The Dark Knight, and a new development suggests we were fairly close to that being reality.
“I remember I talked to Chris Nolan about The Dark Knight and that didn’t happen for whatever reason,” Phoenix said in an interview with Rick Rubin on the Tetragrammaton podcast. “I wasn’t ready then. That’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘What is in me that’s not doing this?’ And it’s not about me. There’s something else. There’s another person who is going to do something… I can’t imagine what it would be if we didn’t have Heath Ledger’s performance in that film.”
Going further, Phoenix says that his gut feeling was not to take the role, despite Nolan’s desire for him to bring this Batman villain to life in the sequel.
Ultimately, Phoenix was right. We needed to see Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, not just due to it being a career-best performance for the star, but also the fact that it set the bar so high for those who would take on the role thereafter, which in turn influenced how incredible Joker’s titular character was all those years later.
It was for the best that Phoenix didn’t get the role, and truthfully his version of the Joker was better serviced in the 2018 solo film rather than Batman’s sequel. The Arthur Fleck in Joker is a character that thrives on his development being shown on screen, and given The Dark Knight is a Batman film, he simply wouldn’t have had the space to grow into the role in the same way.
There’s no doubting it, both of these actors had incredible Jokers and put on iconic performances during their time on screen — at least in the first film, for Phoenix. Unfortunately, the star’s time as Joker has been largely spoiled by the lackluster sequel Joker: Folie a Deux, which has universally been criticized by critics and fans alike. While the movie is poorly written and simply bad, it’s important to note that Phoenix still does an incredible job of working with the material he is given, and even though it doesn’t have the punch of the first film, his Joker is still a treat to see.
We’ll never know what Phoenix could have been like in The Dark Knight, but the silver lining is that we got not just one, but two incredible Jokers over the years, and that seems like the best outcome to us.
