It is without a shadow of a doubt that Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is one of the best depictions of Batman and his rogues gallery in recent memory. Among the many laurels laid upon the series are the praises poured on Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker, the nemesis to the Bat of Gotham.
Ledger put in a lot of effort to make the character of The Joker as menacing as possible, without resorting to playing off threats like a joke. He did indeed seem like a criminally insane anarchist, who Ledger performed based on various characters from films, television, and even marionettes.
Christopher Nolan had trouble seeing Heath Ledger’s vision for the Joker
While being a visionary director, Nolan admitted that he had trouble seeing what Ledger wanted to do with the character of the Joker. The director and the actor have conversations at length about the character. As revealed in 100 Things Batman Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Joseph McCabe, the director revealed
“We talked about a lot of different influences, and he talked about an extraordinarily diverse set of influences like ventriloquist dummies. The way they would talk and the way they would move and all kinds of peculiar ideas that I wasn’t really able to get a handle on until I saw him start to perform the scenes, and start to show how the character moved and how the character gestured and how the character spoke, with this extraordinarily unpredictable voice.”
The characters that were being thrown around as a source of inspiration included iconic parts like Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, along with literary figures like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Heath Ledger would not have put in the effort for Tim Burton
Ledger talked about what would have been the case if Tim Burton had come knocking with the role of the Joker. The actor did not mince any words while saying that he would not like to step on Nicholson’s toes. The actor, in the same book, revealed:
“But I really loved Batman Begins; and the character of the Joker was just too good to turn down. I’ve said this before, but…if Tim Burton was doing The Dark Knight and asked me to play the Joker I wouldn’t have taken it. Because to try and even touch what Jack Nicholson did in Tim Burton’s world would be a crime. So when Chris [Nolan] came to me, and…I knew how Chris was.”
Ledger has already seen Batman Begins and enjoyed the world that Christopher Nolan made, which was a contributing factor to his decision to take the role. The character of Joker had an alternate take in the hands of Ledger, one that was received well critically and commercially.
