There have been many onscreen incarnations of Batman’s arch nemesis The Joker in the 80 years that he’s existed, but now with the release of his first stand alone film, they may have been rendered moot. Joaquin Phoenix’s gripping character study of a tortured man wrestling with his inner demons amidst the injustices of Gotham City may be the definitive version of the Clown Prince of Crime. Only one other performance has generated the same level of praise, and the comparisons are as stark as they are inevitable.
Heath Ledger notably portrayed the villain in The Dark Knight, appearing as a malignant, twisted sociopath who proliferated chaos. With horrendous scars across his face drawn to mimic The Joker’s famous grin, he was the most realistic version audiences had been exposed to. Joker and Phoenix’s performance have re-imagined the character entirely, making him the product of a modern society and its callous treatment of mental illness. Who wore the clown makeup best? Below are 5 reasons why Joaquin Phoenix is the best Joker, and 5 why it will always be Heath Ledger.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: HE MAKES THE JOKER REALISTIC
Up until Joaquin Phoenix, most fans considered Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker as the most realistic adaptation of a character that had traditionally been played as a campy, theatrical supervillain. Phoenix’s Joker is much more realistic, partially because we see him positioned in a society not unlike our own, and we get to meet his friends, his family, and understand his life goals.
Phoenix’s Joker is an impoverished, deeply troubled man trying to survive in a hostile, unforgiving world that provides an endless deluge of mockery and derision. He is a humanized figure with struggles many people can relate to. He eventually transforms into a person who can finally retaliate when he ceases to give society any value, building a foundation for the moral-less Joker of the Batman mythos.
HEATH LEDGER: HE DIDN’T RATIONALIZE HIS INSANITY
The Joker has been depicted as a true sociopath. He views people more as objects than as living breathing beings. He cares for nothing and no one, because his ultimate goal is chaos. Issues of morality and societal accords don’t hold any merit in his topsy-turvy world.
Heath Ledger epitomized The Joker’s sociopathy with a myriad of actions. He robbed a bank only to light piles of money on fire, killed his own henchmen, and told a different story about his origins to everyone he met. He never rationalized or explained his insanity, and he was all the more terrifying for it, because he could not be understood.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: HE DID THE MOST PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION
In order to transform himself into the Joker, Joaquin Phoenix focused on an grueling weight loss routine that would get him down to the alarming weight we see in the film. He felt it was essential to demonstrate physically how unhealthy he was mentally.
Unfortunately many mental health problems are “invisible illnesses”, meaning that they affect people without making them appear “sick”, resulting in their needs often getting dismissed by the medical community in favor of treating more visibly dire patients.
HEATH LEDGER: HE DID THE MOST MENTAL PREPARATION
It’s become common knowledge that Heath Ledger went to great lengths to mentally prepare for the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight. His father explained how he locked himself in a hotel room for a month to galvanize the maniacal Clown Prince, going so far as to keep a special journal from the perspective of the character.
Dubbed his “Joker journal”, it included excerpts in list format like, “Blend babies. Land mines. AIDS. Beloved pets in bad road accidents. BRUNCH!” This made it seem like it could have been inspiration for the very pages of Arthur Fleck’s journal in Joker.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: HIS PERFORMANCE IS MORE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED
There’s no doubt that Joaquin Phoenix provided a masterful character study with Arthur Fleck’s downward spiral into becoming the famous Gotham villain. Still, some critics weren’t sure if another take on the infamous Joker would generate the same veneration as Heath Ledger’s performance.
Phoenix proved doubters wrong by grabbing not only a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture for Drama for Joker, but the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in the film as well. Some say he’s all but guaranteed to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for Joker, in a role that Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for posthumously after his death.
HEATH LEDGER: HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR THE PERFORMANCE
Heath Ledger would not be alive to see any of the fame and praise generated from The Dark Knight. The fanatical commitment to the role of the Joker, amidst his breakup with partner Michelle Williams, resulted in him developing a “walking pneumonia”, which he desperately tried to take sleeping medication for in an effort to sleep.
The cocktail of pills would be what accidentally took his life in January 22nd, 2008. He was just 28, and at the peak of his career professionally, having been nominated in 2005 for an Academy Award for Best Actor for Brokeback Mountain.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: HE ADDRESSES TOPICAL PROBLEMS
The superhero genre as a whole doesn’t really address any topical problems but Joker does. The Gotham City Arthur Fleck/Joker inhabits is reminiscent of the seedy state of New York City in the early ’80s, full of civil unrest at a growing class crisis brought on by gentrification and income inequality.
He can’t get the healthcare he needs to address his mental illness, he’s viciously bullied, and he watches the 1% flourish while the impoverished barely scrape by. These are concepts we don’t often consider as part of fictitious comic book cities, but are a mirror of talking points that are relevant to today’s society. Phoenix himself discussed systemic societal problems in his acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards for his work in Joker.
HEATH LEDGER: HE WAS UNPREDICTABLE
One of the reasons that The Joker could elude Batman and why he was so unsettling was because he was so unpredictable. Heath Ledger captured what made the Clown Prince of Crime not only such a criminal mastermind, but also a supreme supervillain.
Whether he’s goading Batman to beat him to a bloody pulp in an interrogation room, patronizing Commissioner Gordon with a slow clap, or blowing up a hospital dressed as a nurse, what he would do next couldn’t be anticipated. His every movement, mannerisms, and even the sound of his voice changed seemingly at random.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: HE ADDRESSES MENTAL ILLNESS
Mental illness and mental health have become much more widely discussed in the last decade than they previously had been. Joker takes place in the late ’70s/early ’80s, when there not only wasn’t the vocabulary to begin a mature dialogue on the subject, but it was rarely discussed because it was so heavily stigmatized.
By giving Arthur Fleck a real mental illness (Pseudobulbar Affect) to realistically describe Joker’s famous cackling, Phoenix’s performance not only furthers the dialogue surrounding mental illness, but more accurately reveals the sort of conditions that could lead an already disenfranchised member of society to become The Joker.
HEATH LEDGER: HIS TWISTED SENSE OF HUMOR
As in The Killing Joke, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker wants nothing more than anything to be a stand-up comedian. Viewers get the sense he wants to make people laugh as a salve for his own personal pain. The trouble is, he isn’t very funny, but he continues to seek his audience’s approval.
Heath Ledger’s Joker, on the other hand, doesn’t care about anyone’s opinions of his jokes. His actions are the punchlines, and they’re hilarious to him. Consider the “pencil scene” from The Dark Knight. The Joker’s twisted, depraved, and disturbing sense of humor shines brightest with Ledger’s depiction.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: HE CREATED A COMPLEX CHARACTER
We’ll never know what Heath Ledger would have done with an origin story for his Joker, but Joaquin Phoenix created a character who is well-rounded and fleshed out, with both sympathetic and deplorable qualities. Arthur Fleck is a flawed man with layers, which make him complex and not two-dimensional.
He lives with his ailing mother, and he can’t afford to live anywhere but in a dingy apartment, which feeds his depression. He has a horrible paying job. He wants to be liked, to find romance, and to matter in a cold and unfeeling world, but he’s alienated for his mental illness. This characterization makes it possible to believe there is no one aspect about him that led to his creation of the Joker persona.
HEATH LEDGER: HE WAS INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS
If there was one thing that Heath Ledger’s Joker radiated other than insanity, it was danger. There was something murderous and malevolent about his presence. He was prone to extreme violence without showing any signs of remorse, and his brutality was often on a grand scale.
Ledger’s Joker didn’t require a firearm to feel powerful. In fact, he could kill a person with a pencil or even worse, manipulate people to kill for him. Being alone in a room with him meant a high probability of getting hurt in some manner. He needed to be that dangerous to become Batman’s primary focus.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: HE DIDN’T NEED BATMAN
Joker stands on its own as a film separate from the DCEU. It doesn’t mention Batman, and only makes tertiary references to the Batman mythos. Phoenix’s Joker persona didn’t appear as a direct result of Batman and therefore isn’t defined by him at all.
Other Joker incarnations are defined by Batman’s presence. This is because the comics emphasize their tumultuous relationship and their iconic confrontations. But Phoenix’s Joker’s main nemesis is society and inequality, which give the scope of his character much wider range.
HEATH LEDGER: HE HAD NO MORALITY
Whereas Phoenix’s Joker just wanted to be “somebody” and noticed, Ledger’s Joker has no such desires. Phoenix’s Joker knows the difference between right and wrong, because he knows when he makes a mistake (society constantly reminds him of it) and feels remorse (until its beat out of him).
It’s hard to imagine a time when Ledger’s Joker ever had a sense of morality. Even as a child, one gets the sense he lit puppies on fire just to watch the pretty flames. That, and he also kills indiscriminately. Had Harley Quinn been in The Dark Knight, he would have probably killed her too. Society and all of its ailments never caused his Joker, because it was always there.
