Head-to-Head: The Jokers

Jared Leto played the Joker in Suicide Squad (2015)

Suicide Squad is a film I'll probably need to ruminate on several more times to form a proper judgement on, but as it stands now I thought it was rather entertaining, if deeply flawed on some very basic levels. The writing of the first act is largely a pretty lazy expositionary dump, editing is sloppy in many regards particularly in terms of pacing and transitions from scene to scene, and the way the script builds up the 'villains', the idea of the squad, is weak. Having said that the setpieces once they get going are rather fun, the group camaraderie though a bit rushed and forced is effective, as are the humorous bits. Cinematography is good, and it has a surprising emotional core thanks to the performances of Will Smith, who's basically doing Will Smith but doing it well, and Jay Hernandez's Diablo whose brief character arc ends up being rather effective and poignant. Viola Davis is one mean hardass authority figure and manages to make up for some of the more obvious exposition scenes. And Jai Courtney is rather delightful for once as pretty uncouth, unrepentant Tom Hardy-lookalike Australian criminal Captain Boomerang, making maximum inpact of laughs through every reaction shot he has. Killer Croc is also pretty cool too if underused, with Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's vocal work rather solid and fitting for the character. As for Margot Robbie, I'll get onto her more in a bit but suffice to say I was impressed by her fun and enjoyable portrayal of the sweet malevolence of Harley Quinn, even if she doesn't quite plumb the depths of the character, so to speak.

Some however are decidedly on the negative side. Joel Kinnaman is a bit of a wet blanket on proceedings and Karen Fukuhara plays a pretty superfluous sidekick character, but neither are actively bad, just bland. Cara Delavigne isn't very good as the villain Enchantress but that's more to do with the incredibly lame way she is presented. And then there's the most hyped aspect of the film, Jared Leto's Joker. Well let me just call out one thing that has little to do with Leto, the excessive hype before the performance of a duration of barely over 15 minutes I'd say, and not a Hannibal Lecter 15 minutes in terms of focus. So much was talked about the intense mental method acting undertaken with this role that it was almost sure to be too lofty to live up to.

Well this is another villain performance by DC this year that's really left me disappointed. Leto is nowhere near as bad as Jesse Eisenberg was in BVS and doesn't have enough material to destroy portions of the film as Eisenberg did, but this is a performance that overall I didn't really take to. It's not a good thing when a performance as the Clown Prince in a technically serious film reminds you strongly of Voldemort, not in the Harry Potter films, but A Very Potter Musical. The way Leto's mannerisms for the Joker play out in his opening scenes in particular are truly distracting in a bad way. He's mannered which is understandable, but it always feels slightly goofy, not in the right way for the Joker either, and I must say in these early scenes, which are somewhat distracted by some disorientating editing anyway, Leto just fell very, very flat. The screentime is brief in these flashbacks but quite frankly Leto is rather forgettable in them, I'd say Robbie is far more interesting to watch in these scenes even when she's just playing a normal psychiatrist. Leto's worst scene in the film though is easily the 'transformation' scene. He makes the scene far more unnecessary than it already is with his excessively grotesque and charmless portrayal.

Not an entirely negative performance though as there are good moments. The scene where he interrogates a prison guard and forces him to help in his pursuit of Harley Quinn, is actually quite effective with his creepy routine working well in line with his 'Joker' visage. This is till the end of the scene where he reverts back to some of the more goofy elements of his performance. The scene where he and Harley reunite is actually decently done although again, Robbie overshadows him. And the scene where they break into the science facility to blackmail another scientist guy to help them pursue Harley Quinn is brief but also not bad. And Leto's Joker laugh, while no Heath Ledger, is not bad at all. Overall this is not so much a missed opportunity of a performance, as it is an underwhelming performance of an underwhelming role. Leto is a good actor, and he's not a complete misfire unlike DC's other 2016 nemesis, but this remains quite a poor piece of acting overall with some good moments.

Rating: 2/5

And now for the other gentlemen...

Cesar Romero played the Joker in Batman (1966)

For all intents and purposes, Batman (1966) is the odd one out of these Batman films as it is entirely a comedy, a very enjoyable and deadpan one at that, of the Dark Knight, this time not played with brooding rage by Christian Bale, suave incisiveness by Ben Affleck, or nuanced off-kilterness by Michael Keaton, but by ADAM WEST, and which involves scenes like these:

The film isn't intended to be taken seriously at all, I don't know what some people were thinking when they criticized this for being 'unintentionally cheesy', cheesiness is its whole intent. I mean after all compare the scene here where Batman tries to dispose of the bomb to the equivalent scene in The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, you unoriginal hack!!), and thus with this sort of tone the performances naturally all fall in line. West is great as Batman with complete conviction and utter stupidity, Burt Ward is an infectiously enthusiastic Robin, and Lee Merriwether makes for a particularly sultry and sexy, if not extremely funny, Catwoman. Burgess Meredith, best known as Mickey from the Rocky series, is rather great as the Penguin giving a demented and grotesque, yet funny, performance amped up to 10, and Frank Gorshin is equally great as the Riddler, who is hamtastically brilliant and energizes the screen immensely. All character portrayals here and in some way or the other stupid, Romero's Joker included. It's not the most complex interpretation of the character ever, and Romero is certainly doing a very broad and simple portrayal of the Joker's clownish antics, but it works well for the film. This is a Joker who answers questions about his pale complexion by saying that he works under the decks on a ship, he's not meant to be taken seriously as a threat. He's not the most memorable Joker by any stretch, but certainly a very good and memorable one in the scheme of the film he's in.

Rating: 3.5/5


Jack Nicholson played the Joker in Batman (1989)

Batman is an odd example of Tim Burton's gision clashing with studio mandated directions and as a result though I enjoy it as a film, it's not a very good one. I can't really explain and same goes for Nicholson's performance. It's not technically a bad performance, he gives it his all and the effort comes through in a positive way in some scenes, like his early scenes and the handshake scene. But there's that horrendous museum scene, and also the fact that Nicholson never feels like he's trying to play the Joker.
Rating: 2.5/5


Heath Ledger played the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight is a masteful superhero film, one of my favourite films of all-time, I hate to not be able to give In Bruges the win for 2008 but I simply cannot deny this masterpiece. The more I think about it, it may be my favourite film from Christopher Nolan, and I love The Prestige and adore Memento, Inception, and Interstellar. The script is a 'NO MORE DEAD COPS' and 'THINGS ARE WORSE THAN EVERRRR' and two 'Wow' kids away from perfection, but the heights it hits in dialogue like a certain someone's stories about how they got their scars, and that final monologue delivered to perfection by Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon, and the plotting devices like the opening heist, how Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent's characters work against and with each other, the 'Sophie's Choice' that happens TWICE in the film and feels equally fresh both times, means I can't really fault those smaller moments. As for the film on the technical whole, it's impeccable. The score is intense and unyielding but fitting for the nature of the film, the cinematography is amazing (especially in the Hong Kong scenes, REPRESENT), the editing is amazing (that hostage scene), each character besides RACHEL feels well drawn (and with that character Maggie Gyllenhaal really does all she can to make her exit properly impactful), I can't praise the film enough.

Anyway, onto the topic at hand. I really don't know what more to say about Ledger's performance, that hasn't been said by pretty much everyone else. It's a performance that was hyped before release, even more hyped after the tragedy everyone knows of, and carried non-stop momentum through the film's tremendous box-office run and the awards season, where it won pretty much every award available. This sort of success for anything in the film industry, whether it be a film or performance, usually presents it as a perfect target for retroactive critcism. Ledger's performance, however, has really stood the test of time. I've yet to find someone who doesn't at least like the sheer scope, talent and daring involved in this performance.

I suppose I could go over the character creation, that peculiar voice so different to his usual Aussie accent with that strange intonation to every word that feels both unnatural and natural. I can't describe it otherwise. I love every word that comes from his mouth, Nolan's script helps of course, but also the way he makes each sentence so trippingly to his tongue which he licks at his chops and makeup (one of my favourite aspects of Nolan's Joker is how the whole issue of him being a clown is that he presents himself as a clown, not some chemical incident that caused him to become one). His way of walking and moving his arms, gesticulating, that utterly creepy way he brushes his hair as he moves in for the play on Rachel, and the way he hunches over, a clever technique to handle the fact Ledger was slightly taller than Bale, and also  all so purrrrrfect.

Ledger's performance really is one of the riskiest portrayals of all-time, I'd argue in fact it's probably the riskiest performance ever to win an Oscar. If you count up the total minutes of Ledger's performance, it comes up to around 34 minutes, and that's including some pretty brief scenes, and so it's testament to Ledger entirely that he makes his presence felt in every scene. From the opening bank heist scene, the way he takes off his mask and reveals himself, technically speaking just some brief introductory work but Ledger immediately makes his mark there already. From that point on Ledger's performance only gets even better. He revels in the chaotic nature of his character but never once like Leto or Nicholson do his actions seem vague. He's an enigma, he's mysterious and yet for all intents and purposes you know exactly what he's trying to do, you just don't know how. He manages to be both wildly entertaining and funny, while at the same time psychologically explores his character perfectly. In terms of best scenes? Too many. The mob introduction scene of course, but also all of his 'you know how I got these scars?' scenes, the dinner scene, and of course his final brilliant scene.

Ledger's tragic death is one of the greatest 'what could have beens' and this performance encapsulates a side to his talents we never got to really see beyond well, this performance, but oh what a crowning achievement it is. I need a longer article in itself to properly elaborate on it. But as it stands Ledger's performance walks the perfect tightrope between OTT and subtlety. He nails every step of the Joker's characterisation and crafts a perfect villain and adversary for Batman.

Rating: 5/5


Bonus-

Mark Hamill voiced the Joker in Mask of the Phantasm (1993) and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000)

I should note perhaps that I won't be ranking this fabulous set of work with the other performances above because a vocal performance does fall under different criteria for me. Nevertheless, I thought it'd be a shame not to at least mention Mark Hamill's fantastic work as the Joker for Batman: The Animated Series, and the two feature films above. His Joker voice is simply stupendous, eloquent in its madness and mad in its eloquence. One of the great pleasures of growing about and finding out more about film in general, is discovering that this iconic Joker was voiced by Luke Skywalker himself. Hamill's voice is utterly transformative here in not only being completely unrecognisable, and extremely creepy and effective when the Joker need be the menacing foe he is, but more importantly carrying with it an ever-changing current of humour. Hamill's Joker is ludicrously entertaining in his various machinations, and you're always invested in whatever devious scheme he's cooking up because of Hamill's great voice work.