The Dark Knight: A Comic Curiosity

When it was announced July 31, 2006 that Heath Ledger was going to play one of the most coveted villian roles ever most people could not believe what they heard. Ledger, who has shown spurts in his career as an established actor is going to play Batman's greatest nemisis, the Joker, in Warner Brothers second installment of the re-franchise of Batman titled The Dark Knight.

First things first. What a great title. It is perfect, alot different than Batman followed by a condesending word or an attempt to sound cool like Batman Continues (You know since the first was Batman Begins). Batman Returns or Batman Forever have been taken so those are out of the question.

The second Batman film will feature the Joker as the primary villian as was hinted too at the end of the first movie. So The Joker will enter the scene in the new Batman Franchise, a retelling of Batman that made Warner Brothers look like geniuses especially after re-doing a series of films that started off with greatness and slowly declined into a movie where Arnold Schwartzenegger was the best actor in the film. In this new film The Joker will be played by the aforementioned Heath Ledger. Yes, this is a correct statement. So what does this mean is there going to be a Brokeback Batman, certainly not. Ledger has never shown much in any movie that he can be the Joker but then again The Joker in this film may be one that has never been seen before either.

Jack Nicholson who portrayed The Joker in the 1989 film BATMAN gave moviegoers a character that was eccentric, clever and phsycopathic. However he was portrayed as an eccentric prankster and thief. Be prepared for the original intention of the Joker to be seen in this upcoming film. This is why Ledger could make the Joker one of the scariest villians since Hannibal Lecter. According to an interview by the Toronto Sun, Ledger had this to say about his new character,"It is definitely going to stump people. I think it will be more along the lines of how the Joker was meant to be in the comics, darker more sinister."

With David Goyer returning to pen the second film in the franchise along with director Chris Nolan co-writing you can believe that it will be this way. The original and currently dominant image of the Joker is of a sadistic, fiendishly intelligent lunatic with a warped sense of humor, deriving pleasure from inflicting horrifically morbid death and terror upon innocent people. In this interpretation, he will be a textbook example of antisocial personality disorder; in a sense, he is Charles Manson cursed with a clown's grinning face and a grotesque sense of showmanship. According to the Toronto Star, Ledger says, "It will be less about his laugh and more about his eyes, muc like Clockwork Orange." The Joker will be cold, methodical and calculating. This is where Ledger will be sucessful at portraying this role and with Chris Nolan to helm the sequel you can bet that he will bring those qualities out of Ledger and make him into a stone cold killer.

Lastly, The Dark Knight will epand upon all the successes of it predeceser while creating new ones. For those who are quick to judge remember many casting questions have come up with certain actors taking on roles of major comic book heroes or villians. Many people were not sure of Christian Bale's ability to dawn the cape and cowl or Brandon Routhe's talent to be Clark Kent/Superman. Even Tobey McGuire as Spider-man was scrutinized heavily by critics until they saw the film. Now we cannot see anybody else playing those roles. Bale because of his ability to show us Bruce Wayne's complexity and Batman's skill as a detective first and "ninga" second. Routhe because of his uncanny resemblence to Christopher Reeves and brilliant skill as Kent and Superman, and McGuire, because of the complexity he brings to the role of Peter Parker/Spider-man.

To conclude, great characters come not just from the brains and talent of the actor portraying them on-screen but also from the writer who wrote the lines to the director managing the actor on screen. Routhe's success as Superman is a tribute to Brian Singer, Bale's success is contributed to the wonderful writing of Goyer and the direction of Nolan, and McGuire's sense of Parker's complexity comes from his director Sam Raimi. Nolan's directing will mesh with Ledger and Goyer's writing will give him the necessary space to make the new Joker anything but a joke.

The Dark Knight is planned to be released by Warner Brothers in 2008.