The Joker Adapted: A Retrospective On The Clown Prince Of Crime

Live-Action Cinema

While Cesar Romero was technically the first Joker in a feature length film, in 1966’s Batman: The Movie, it was Jack Nicholson who defined the character – and his own career – as The Joker in 1989’s Batman – directed by Tim Burton. In the role he was seemingly born to play, Nicholson harnessed his own creepy smile while adding a sprinkle of exaggerated physicality and a dash of impressive vocalization to create a Joker for the ages. His is essentially a modernization of Romero’s version from 1966, as was required for Tim Burton’s stylized visual representation of the comic book characters.

However, Nicholson’s triumph was in accentuating the sinister, disturbing side of The Joker, in the most subtle of ways. With a simple head tilt, a raised eyebrow, or a menacing pause, Jack Nicholson delivered a new interpretation of the character that set a precedent for the next twenty years of Batman films – the Dark Knight being overshadowed by the impressive supervillain.

The next Joker in cinema assumed the mantle under the direction of Christopher Nolan in 2008’s The Dark Knight, and earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, posthumously. Heath Ledger’s version of The Joker was wildly different from that of Jack Nicholson, thanks to the much more grounded, realistic tone of the second instalment of Nolan’s Batman trilogy. There was a greater emphasis on the pained, disfigured physicality of The Joker – often appearing with his shoulders hunched, and with angles and frames highlighting his facial scarring.

Ledger also gave a new voice to The Joker – eschewing the grand, almost operatic vocals of Romero and Nicholson, and performing in a more nasal, almost wincing tone. These adjustments resulted in a Joker who was entirely immersed in chaos and anarchy, rather than pre-mediated, sadistic scheming. This placed greater emphasis on the unpredictability and emotional detachment of The Joker’s insanity – which, in turn, made him scarier. The Joker as played by Romero and Nicholson had been anarchic, while possessing a certain stillness and sinister drive at the centre. Ledger’s Joker just didn’t care.

Now, we have a new version of The Joker to look forward to – as played by Jared Leto. After the powerhouse turns of Nicholson and Ledger, Leto has big clown shoes to fill – but all indications suggest that his performance is, at once, close to the comic book source material, and also entirely new to the screen. Whether we see the incorporation of elements of other performances in Leto’s Joker or not, this version is a historic moment for the character, for a very simple reason – while Batman will appear in Suicide Squad, Suicide Squad is not a Batman film.

For the first time in cinema, we will see The Joker unencumbered by the frame of Batman’s lens. Here, he is not functioning as a window into the psyche of the Dark Knight – he is his own character, in his own world – operating as the DC Comics giant he truly is. In this respect, The Joker of Suicide Squad is already the most accurate adaptation of the character in film, because in comic books, The Clown Prince Of Crime has transcended all limitations of a supervillain character to become a bona fide icon of absolute mayhem.