THROUGH THE AGES
Ever since he was first introduced in the Batman comics in 1940 as the masked crusader’s arch-enemy, the Joker has held sway over the imagination of comic fans, television lovers and movie geeks. On screen the Joker was first portrayed by Cesar Romero in the memorably camp and zany ’60s TV show that starred the late Adam West as the dark knight. Romero’s deliciously over the top and madcap interpretation was faithful to the villain’s depiction from the ’50s until the ’70s, a time when the tyranny of the Comics Code Authority meant that the character’s dark side and mental problems were subsumed by clownish antics more suitable to family values.
That all began to change in the 1970s and led to the seminal late 1980s comics — Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke and Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum — in which the Joker’s traumatic personal history and mentally unstable origins were explored through dark stories that attempted to understand him not so much as a Bozo but as a sad and tormented clown.
Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman gave the role to Jack Nicholson (at the time his was the highest fee ever paid to a Hollywood actor). Nicholson created a new version of the Joker that borrowed some of Romero’s slapstick flavour while adding a darker, more menacing and lethal layer to the character.
In 2008 Heath Ledger provided what for many is the quintessential on-screen realisation of the Joker in all his demented glory in a performance that would prove to be the Australian actor’s final and much acclaimed moment.
Batman fans don’t really like to think too much about Jared Leto’s 2016 appearance in DC’s ill-fated and lambasted Suicide Squad but, judging from the initial buzz after the Venice Film Festival premier of Joker, the baton has now passed to Joaquin Phoenix.
The actor’s performance has generated plenty of possible Oscar nomination whispers and awe from fans and critics alike for a version of an old villain that’s so relevant in these increasingly crazy and uncertain times.