The Joker (Heath Ledger)

"This city deserves a better class of criminal, and I'm gonna give it to them."

- The Joker

The Joker is an anarchist criminal mastermind who terrorizes Gotham City. He was played by Heath Ledger.

Origin and early life
"Why so serious?"

- The Joker

Little can be confirmed regarding the life of this man before he reinvented himself as the Joker. Despite his capture, no traces could be found of the man's fingerprints, dental records, or DNA matches against the GCPD's databases.

The Joker's own testimony, while normally quite true when it came to carrying out threats, seemed at times contradictory, and he was known to lie at times when describing past events in his life. One of his anecdotes told of an extremely abusive father, stating that after attacking his mother with a knife, the blade was next turned on the young man, creating his mutilated smile. If the statement was at least partially true, it could account for both mental and physical scarring that would give rise to the sociopathic and homicidal man.

The catch is that the story conflicts with another one the Joker told later, stating that he once had a wife. Locked in a debt with loan sharks, enforcers came and cut his wife's face. In a desperate effort to assure his wife that he did not care about the damage to her appearance, the future Joker took a razor to his cheeks to produce his Glasgow smile. But the disturbing image instead caused his wife to leave him, possibly damaging his psyche.

It is widely speculated that one story or the other is a lie, or that perhaps both are falsehoods. It's also not impossible that both stories could actually be somewhat true, in that the Joker hinted to scarring on his left side when his knife was pressed to Gambol's mouth, while the scene with Rachel Dawes alluded to damage on the right side. The Joker's body language during these stories would suggest that certain truthful elements were in both tales, but that much of it was a fabrication. The powerful contradictions however, leave the Joker's background as is: completely unsolved.

Possibly the most telling truth about his past is a comment he made to the Manager of Gotham National Bank. When asked what he believed in, the Joker stated that he believed whatever doesn't kill a person simply makes them "stranger". This would seem to suggest that a violent attack or other incidents he suffered through helped to damage his mental health, and if attacked, possibly inflicted the cuts that would become his cheek scars.

Arrival in Gotham
Shortly after the death of Ra's al Ghul, Batman discussed with Lieutenant James Gordon the effect that he had made on Gotham City since his appearance. Gordon then revealed that a criminal with "a taste for theatrics" recently committed a double homicide and an armed robbery, leaving behind a Joker playing card as a "calling-card". Gordon also warned that just as escalation occurs in terms of the police force against crime, so might the scale and style of criminality change in reaction to Batman's appearance.

Some time later, the Joker would orchestrate the theft of a large shipment of ammonium nitrate from the Gotham Docks. The explosive chemical was saved for storage on two passenger ferries some time later.

Bank Robbery
"I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you...stranger."

- Joker to the Bank Manager of Gotham National Bank



Several months later a group of bank robbers, (Grumpy, Happy, Dopey, Chuckles, Bozo and an unidentified bus-driver) under the direction of the Joker, robbed Gotham National Bank which was used as a money-laundering front for Gotham's gangs. The clown mask wearing robbers whittled down their own numbers within minutes in a series of calculated betrayals. Finally only "Bozo" remained, who revealed himself as the Joker to the manager of Gotham National Bank, who had earlier confronted the robbers with a shotgun. The Joker then escaped with the bank's cash in a yellow school bus, driving into a long line of other buses.

Dealing with the Mob
"Oh, and by the way, the suit, it wasn't cheap. You ought to know, you bought it."

- Joker to the Mob



Shortly following the bank robbery, Italian crime boss Sal Maroni mentioned the Joker's recent theft of Mob owned cash to his fellow crime leaders at a business meeting, dismissing him as a threat and saying that he was a "nobody" wearing a "cheap suit". The Joker, overhearing this comment and the plan presented to the Mob by Chinese mobster, Lau, arrived unannounced at the meeting while faking a laugh, as he saw their "so called plan" as a bad joke. He also described the meeting as a "group therapy session". The mobsters were at first unwilling to even hear him out, and Gambol, one of the crime lords who seemed to take the most dislike for the Joker when setting eyes on him, sent one of his men to take him out by force, but the Joker unexpectedly said he was going to perform a magic trick by making a pencil "disappear" and embedded the pencil in the table, and then when Gambols's goon was about to grab him, the Joker quickly countered his attack and shoved him head-first into the pencil where it indeed disappeared inside the man's head via eyeball, instantly killing him. The Joker also mentioned that his suit wasn't cheap and that they ought to know this since they bought it, which meant that he used the money he stole at the start of the film to buy his suit. He proposed that it was Batman's interference that had resulted in idealistic leaders like Harvey Dent rising in popularity, and offered his services to kill him for half of all the money that Lau, an illegitimate Chinese accountant, took away from Gotham for safe keeping. He also warned them that Lau would betray them if arrested, claiming to know a squealer when he saw one. While the Bratva mobster, the Chechen, and Maroni were interested, Gambol, angered by the Joker's lack of respect, attempted to attack him, forcing the Joker to reveal his insurance policy: several grenades hidden under his coat, allowing him to make a quick escape. Frustrated, Gambol proceeded to put a bounty on him. The Joker later took revenge that night by having his men come to Gambol, claiming to have killed the Joker. In a bit of unintended tragic irony, the Joker's 'dead' body is brought inside in a garbage bag before attacking Gambol and proceeding to tell him the origin of his mouth scars as a way of psychological torture and intimidation, then when Gambol is most terrified and shaken, the Joker proceeds to kill him with the knife. Then with the remains of Gambol's men overpowered and at his mercy, he takes a pool stick and breaks it in half, making it sharp-like and says that there is only one spot open at the moment to join his "team", then throws the piece of sharp stick at the middle of Gambol's scared men and has his gang, made up mostly of mentally-ill and unstable vicious crooks escaped from Arkham Asylum who seem to have taken the Joker as their leader, to make Gambol's men fight to death with the stick until only one is left, and advising them to "make it fast".

The Joker's Threat
"Harvey, Harvey, Harvey Dent. Oh, 'scuse me. I wanna drive!"

- Joker to his dead truck driver



Eventually, realizing that Batman had retrieved Lau from Hong Kong and that the police had struck a deal to testify against them, Sal Maroni and the Chechen relented, finally hiring the Joker to kill the Batman. The Joker first kidnapped a Batman impersonator, filmed his murder and hung the body, complete with white make-up and a Joker scars, outside the mayor's office. In the murder tape he sent to the media, the Joker viciously mocks Brian Douglas (batman impersonator) as well as terrorize him to the point of leaving him absolutely frozen and weeping, as well as taunt his beliefs and his actions. Then when finished humiliating him and disturbing him into terror, he proceeds to give Gotham a ultimatum. Batman must take off his mask and turn himself to the authorities and every day the Batman refuses to do so, he will murder innocent people day after day. As a result of the Batman not turning himself in, the first major victims were Janet Surillo, the judge presiding over Dent's indictments, and then Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb.

Later the Joker and his gang stormed a fundraiser at Bruce Wayne's penthouse to kill Harvey Dent and was confronted by Batman. The Joker only managed to escape by throwing Rachel Dawes out a window, who Batman then lept after and saved.

The killings then continued with two innocents and an attempt on the mayor's life at a memorial for the murdered police commissioner. The Joker appeared in public without makeup, impersonating one of the Honor Guards, and shot his rifle at Mayor Anthony Garcia, Lt. James Gordon was struck in the back after willfully leaping in front of Garcia, in order to fake his death to avoid any future attempt by the Joker of attacking him with his family at home. As a result of this, Batman told Dent to call a press conference so he could reveal his identity and stop the killings. In a surprise move, Dent instead claimed to be the Batman himself and was subsequently arrested.

While being transported the Joker and his gang attacked the caravan of police vehicles to kill Dent with his machine gun, a shotgun and even a rocket-propelled grenade. Batman soon arrived to stop the assault, but stayed his hand at killing the Joker. The Joker prepared to unmask Batman but Lt. Gordon, newly resurrected from his hoaxed death, stepped behind him and aimed his shotgun at his back, exclaiming "We got you, you son of a bitch". The Joker was sucessfully jailed at MCU, and as a direct result, Lt. James Gordon was promoted to Commissioner by the Mayor.

Assault on Gotham
"Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos."

- The Joker

With the Joker in custody Gordon and Batman believed his madness was over, but became alarmed when informed that Harvey Dent had gone missing. Desperate, Gordon let Batman torture the Joker for information, but the Joker seemed unshaken by the pain. Instead, he gleefully told Batman his view of people as selfish and violent, only needing a little pressure before descending to madness. He also admited he could never kill Batman, considering him his only equal. Dent's kidnapping was part of a test, to see if Batman would save him or Rachel, whom the Joker could tell Batman cared for. The Joker willingly told him where both were located. After most of the police were gone, the Joker took his guard hostage and escaped by detonating a phone-activated bomb he surgically planted in the stomach of one of his men who was arrested with him, with Lau in tow. Gordon was disheartened when he realized the Joker wanted to be captured.

Dent and Rachel each awoke tied to chairs with barrels of explosive material surrounding them and a speakerphone hooked up to the other's location. Rachel confessed her love for him and agreed to marry him. Harvey fell on the floor and his left side was completely immersed in turpentine. Batman arrived but found Dent instead of Rachel. He realized that the Joker had lied about Rachel and Dent's whereabouts to further crush Batman's morale. Batman rescued Dent as the building exploded and Harvey's face was badly burned, while Gordon was unable to rescue Rachel before the explosion. In the hospital Harvey was driven to madness over the loss of Rachel, and blamed Batman, Gordon and the Joker. This act caused Sal Maroni to tell Gordon the Joker's location, finding him too dangerous for business. The Joker later met the Chechen in a container ship with Lau and was given his reward: half the mobs smuggled money, which he casually burned along with Lau. He betrayed the Chechen and took control of his men.



The Joker then made a call to a news program where Coleman Reese was threatening to go public on the news with information about Batman's identity. He was interrupted by the Joker who stated he had changed his mind, believing Gotham to be too boring without Batman. To "give others the fun" he threatened that if someone didn't kill the employee in sixty minutes he would blow up a hospital. Gordon then abandoned his ambush on the Joker to focus on evacuating all city hospitals

Contact with Harvey Dent
During the mass evacuation, The Joker poorly disguised as a nurse (still wearing his 'Joker' face paint), entered the hospital room of Harvey Dent. Blaming the mob and Gordon's corrupt cops for the kidnapping and murder of Rachel, he convinced Harvey to exact his revenge upon them. Dent responded by flipping a coin to decide the Joker's fate, giving him the same chance Rachel had. Soon after Dent left, Joker detonated the Gotham General Hospital, skipping merrily away (though pausing and hitting his detonator in frustration when most of the bombs temporarily fail to blow). He and his men then stole one the buses nearby and kidnapped the TV reporter and his crew inside.

The Ferries
The Joker declared that he would rule the streets and that anyone left in Gotham would be subjected to his rule. He told people they could leave now but that he would have a surprise for them in the tunnel and on the bridge, which people then avoided, using instead two ferries, one ship full of ordinary civilians and one of criminals, as Gordon feared the Joker would want to recruit them. However, the Joker had loaded each of them with explosives. In hopes of showing everyone how evil and corrupt they can be, he gave the passengers of each ship the detonator to the bombs to the other and offers both survival if they detonate the other ferry. If they didn't choose by midnight, the Joker would blow up both ships.

Batman discovered not only the Joker's location at an unfinished skyscraper, but that the majority of his "gang" were actually hostages wearing clown-masks with unloaded guns taped to their hands and that the people dressed as hostages were the actual criminals. Batman was forced to fight not only the Joker's men but the SWAT teams as well to save the hostages. He finally confronted the Joker, who set several dogs on him and managed to pin him under the scaffolding. He gleefully waited as the ferry's deadline neared, and was visibly disappointed when both ferries refused to kill the other to save themselves. The civilians voted to blow up the other ferry, but could not bring themselves to actually do so, while one of the criminals stepped forward and, taking the detonator, threw it out a porthole saying that the cops should have done that from the start. Before he could detonate both ferries, Batman hit him with his shooting wrist-blades and threw the laughing man over the edge. But Batman refusing to kill him, instead caught him with his grapple gun and leaving him hanging for the police to capture.

With this act, the Joker acknowledged that Batman really is incorruptible but that Dent is no longer the "White Knight"; he's unleashed the scarred man on the city. Joker states that Dent was his "ace in the hole" in his plan to show the people of Gotham that everyone is corruptible, thus undoing Dent's work before his transformation into Two-Face. Batman left the Joker to dangle helplessly as he was approached by the SWAT team. As they approached him, he laughed maniacally, swaying on the line. Because the Joker was able to darken the city's perception of Batman as well as sway Dent away from his strong moral stances, it can be argued that the Joker won.

Incarceration
The circumstances of the Joker's arrest and incarceration have remained unrevealed. As Arkham Asylum was likely still closed, and the MCU and GCPD would likely be afraid to harbor him, the Joker may have been sent to the maximum security Blackgate Penetentiary.

Psychological Profile
The Joker claimed to not be insane, but rather just "ahead of the curve". This may have been legally true, yet he still exhibited many symptoms of varying failings of mental health. The Joker was also described as having "zero empathy", which is shown throughout as being true. When Batman is throwing the Joker around the room and attacking him, demanding for the location of Rachel and Harvey, he takes the assault with pleasure as he laughed while being beatened by the Batman. Along with being extremely sadistic, the Joker seems to have very little care for his own safety, such as when Batman threw him off a skyscraper building to his supposed death and he did nothing but laugh (only for Batman to save him with his grapple gun).

He exhibits various symptoms of an antisocial personality, blatantly disregarding laws and social norms far beyond standard deviant behavior. The Joker also has a low level of inhibition, which allows him to plan accordingly with complex and impossible plans. Much of his behavior could also be attributed to histrionic personality disorder which presents with an extreme attention-seeking appearance (his theatrical dress and make-up), inappropriate assumptions of close relationships (Batman "completes" him), and publicizing his plans on several occasions.

While The Joker does attempt to take control of the city, recruits unemployed mob henchmen, and refers to himself as a "better class of criminal", it should be noted that he appears to hold his anarchist philosophy of chaos higher than himself. He describes himself as merely an "agent" of chaos.

Abilities
The version of The Joker in The Dark Knight displays a genius level of planning, or is at least very good at improvising criminal activities. He is shown to be incredibly intelligent, always staying one step ahead of everyone, including Batman (for a while) and the police. He is also shown to be a skilled fighter, taking on mob henchmen and cops with ease; and was even capable of holding his own against Batman and trapping him near the climax of the film (although he had assistance on both occasions when fighting Batman).

Production
The origins of the Joker are left deliberately ambiguous in The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan and his co-writer Jonathan Nolan suggested the Joker's first two appearances in 1940's issues of Batman as crucial influences. Just as in these issues of the Batman comic, the Joker's back-story is expanded upon little. Instead, the Joker is portrayed as an "absolute". "The Joker we meet in The Dark Knight is fully formed...To me, the Joker is an absolute. There are no shades of gray to him — maybe shades of purple. He's unbelievably dark. He bursts in just as he did in the comics." Nolan later reiterated, "We never wanted to do an origin story for the Joker in this film", because "the arc of the story is much more Harvey Dent's; the Joker is presented as an absolute. It's a very thrilling element in the film, and a very important element, but we wanted to deal with the rise of the Joker, not the origin of the Joker."

Heath Ledger described the Joker as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy". Nolan had wanted to work with Ledger on a number of projects in the past, but had been unable to do so. When Ledger saw Batman Begins, he realized a way to make the character work consistent with that film's tone, and Nolan agreed with his anarchic interpretation. To prepare for the role, Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character's posture, voice and psychology, and kept a diary, in which he recorded the Joker's thoughts and feelings to guide himself during his performance. While he initially found it difficult, Ledger was eventually able to generate a voice that did not sound like Jack Nicholson's take on the character in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film. He was also given Batman: The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth to read, which he "really tried to read [...] and put it down". Ledger also cited inspirations such as A Clockwork Orange and Sid Vicious, which were "a very early starting point for Christian Bale and I. But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether." "There’s a bit of everything in him. There’s nothing that consistent," Ledger said, adding that "There are a few more surprises to him." Before Ledger was confirmed to play the Joker in July 2006, Paul Bettany, Lachy Hulme, Adrien Brody, Steve Carell, and Robin Williams publicly expressed interest in the role. On not being invited to reprise the Joker, Jack Nicholson remarked that he was "furious". In turn, responding to his initially-controversial selection to play the Joker, Ledger stated publicly, "It would not matter who is chosen to play the [Joker]. [...] In any film, there is always someone who does not like you and I am secure in my choices and my record. But I know at the end of the day you are never going to please anyone 100 percent…I refuse to carbon copy a performance. That would not be a challenge and it would be mocking Mr. Nicholson, whom I have much respect for."

Though a unique portrayal, this Joker interpretation maintains much of his comic personality, such as his refusal to kill Batman, his philosophy that people are all insane and Two-face's origin story in the film mirror the themes and plot of Batman: The Killing Joke, as well as his unreliable memory.

On January 22, 2008, after he had completed filming The Dark Knight, Ledger died, leading to intense press attention and memorial tributes. In March 2008, four months prior to the film's scheduled release, Larry Carroll reported that "like Batman himself, Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal and director Christopher Nolan find themselves shifting gears between being secretive, superheroic and fighting back a deep sadness." "It was tremendously emotional, right when he passed, having to go back in and look at him every day," Nolan recalled. "But the truth is, I feel very lucky to have something productive to do, to have a performance that he was very, very proud of, and that he had entrusted to me to finish." All of Ledger's scenes appear as he completed them in the filming; in editing the film, Nolan added no "digital effects" to alter Ledger's actual performance posthumously. Nolan has dedicated the film in part to Ledger's memory, as well as to the memory of technician Conway Wickliffe, who was killed during a car accident while preparing one of the film's stunts.

Design
The Joker's scruffy and grungy make-up is intended as a reflection of his "edgy" character. Costume designer Lindy Hemming described the Joker's look as reflecting his personality—that "he doesn't care about himself at all"; she avoided designing him as a vagrant but still made him appear to be "scruffier, grungier", so that "when you see him move, he's slightly twitchier or edgy." Nolan noted, "We gave a Francis Bacon spin to [his face]. This corruption, this decay in the texture of the look itself. It's grubby. You can almost imagine what he smells like." In creating the "anarchical" look of the Joker, Hemming drew inspiration from such countercultural pop culture artists as Pete Doherty, Iggy Pop, and Johnny Rotten. During the course of the film, the Joker only once removes his make-up, causing it to become more unkempt and resemble an infection as it worsens. Ledger described his "clown" mask, made up of three pieces of stamped silicone, as a "new technology", taking much less time for the make-up artists to apply than more-conventional prosthetics usually requires—the process took them only an hour—and resulting in Ledger's impression that he was barely wearing any make-up at all.

Miscellanea

 * At the beginning of The Dark Knight, when the Joker was waiting on the curb for his pickup, he was not yet wearing hair color spray, and was also likely not wearing makeup, in order to avoid rousing suspicion from the public. He likely applied his face makeup when Grumpy loaded the money in the vault. The Joker still did not have hair color when the bus driver crashed through the wall. His hair first appeared colored after the driver put the brakes on the bus, in place by the shot when the driver stepped off the bus. This means he would have had to quickly spray it on as the driver was making his way down the bus' seat aisle.
 * There's a slight reference to Jack Nicholson's characterization of the Joker in the movie. The truck that the Joker uses to try and kill Harvey Dent has the words "Slaughter is the best medicine" (With the "S" being spray-painted on in red). The original saying, "Laughter is the best medicine", is Joker's catchphrase in the 1989 film Batman.

Gallery

 * The Joker (Heath Ledger)/Photo Gallery

Appearances

 * Batman Begins (mentioned only)
 * The Dark Knight

Clips
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See

 * The Joker
 * The Joker (Cesar Romero)
 * The Joker (Jack Nicholson)
 * The Joker (Roger Stoneburner)
 * The Joker (BTAS)
 * The Joker (The Batman)