“Wanna know how I got these scars?”
It’s a questionHeath Ledger’s Joker asks three times inChristopher Nolan’sThe Dark Knight. Just before Joker kills a gangster, he asks this question of his victim and recalls how his father “was a drinker and a fiend” who ran a blade across his son’s face in a rage.
When he crashes Bruce Wayne’s fundraiser for Harvey Dent, the Clown Prince of Gotham explains to Rachel Dawes how he scarred himself to ease the pain of his wife, who was mutilated by loan sharks. Despite the mayhem of the scene, the audience wants to connect with this sadistic villain and hope that maybe he has a reason for being the way that he is. But is Joker insane? Is he merely a pathological liar, or is he consciously catering his story to each victim — an abusive father for a mob boss and an abused wife for Harvey’s girlfriend?
The Joker threatens to tell a third story to Batman at the end of the movie, but gets a bunch of blades in his face before he has a chance to relate another twisted origin story.
The terror lies in this uncertainty. It’s a natural response to want to make sense of why anyone would drive a pencil through the eye of a human being, or slaughter a police officer for the news cameras, or threaten to explode two ferries full of civilians and inmates for some sick game. Bruce’s own morality is pushed to the brink of its limits in an attempt to understand his nemesis, but Joker doesn’t let us sympathize. Maybe he’s doing it because, as Alfred Pennyworth says, “some people just want to watch the world burn.”
The Joker’s origin story has been an ongoing mystery across film, television, and comics, with a few exceptions —Tim Burton’sBatmanbeing one. As reports surfaced on Tuesday of Warner Bros.’ next expansion to its DC film roster, we’re left wondering whether or not we really need to know the backstory of one of the most crazed killers of Gotham. The powers that be behind the DC Extended Universe ofJustice Leagueseem to think we do.
According to reports,an origin story for Jokeris in the works.Todd Phillips(The Hangover,War Dogs) will direct and co-write the script with screenwriterScott Silver(The Fighter), whileMartin Scorsese, a name one doesn’t usually consider when discussing the superhero genre, might be on board to produce.
Jared Letodebuted as a new iteration of the character inDavid Ayer’sSuicide Squad, but he’s not expected to be a part of this standalone film. In fact, it will be altogether separate from the timeline involvingBatman v Superman,Wonder Woman, andAquaman, kickstarting a series of one-offs under a new banner that doesn’t care about continuity.
On one level, there’s something to be excited about. As Deadline reported, “The intention is to make a gritty and grounded hard-boiled crime film set in early-’80s Gotham City that isn’t meant to feel like a DC movie as much as one of Scorsese’s films from that era, likeTaxi Driver,Raging Bull, orThe King ofComedy.” And the fact that we can forget about how it has to connect with which film is an enticing prospect. But the exploration of Joker’s origin seems, in its very nature, to disregard the character’s history.
Explaining the minds of famous movie monsters don’t always work out as planned, as we’ve seen withRidley Scott’sAlienprequels or films like 2007’sHannibal Risingand 2006’sTexas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. With Joker, specifically, the mystery of his origins is part of the allure, and part of what fuels the horror of his actions.
Over the course of the comics, there have been various versions of Joker’s past. One of the closest instances we got to a detailed fleshing-out was withAlan Moore’sBatman: The Killing Joke: as told through flashback frames, readers saw Joker starting out as a failed comedian who turns to a life of crime and adopts the moniker of Red Hood. He eventually falls into a vat of chemical waste, disfiguring himself into the monster we know today as he’s driven mad by the death of his wife. However, even this take plays with the ambiguity inherent with Joker.
The maniac famously cackles, “Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another…If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!”
Nolan understood this concept forThe Dark Knight, which, on top of Ledger’s performance, is why this iteration is so widely celebrated. “The purpose of the Joker, for us, was always that he has no arc,” he told/Filmin a 2008 interview. “He has no development, he doesn’t learn anything through the film; he’s an absolute. He cuts through the film sort of like the shark inJaws, so he’s a catalyst for action.”
The filmmaker pointed out in a separate chat with Empire magazine (viaMoviePilot):
If you look at Hannibal Lecter or someone like that, the more you explain where he came from, the less interesting he is, I think. In that firstMichael Mannfilm, where he’s just sitting in that jail cell, pontificating about serial killers, he’s absolutely terrifying and then each of the films that have had him in as a character have progressively revealed more and more about who he was and have made him more of an ordinary person, and he gets less and less interesting.
This mystique of Joker has been the subject of many fan theories over the years, includingthe one about Joker bearing the name Wayne— and it has boosted the character’s overall popularity. WhenScott Snyderintroduced the concept that Joker might be immortal in theEndgamecomic book arc, he clarified toIGN:
What I want you to believe is whichever side you prefer, because he’s trying to make an argument to Batman that Batman absolutely will not accept. It’s not meant to be something you see and say, “Oh, of course that’s true.” You’re supposed to be with Batman, kind of like, “That cannot be true. Is it true? I hope it’s not true,” all of that stuff.
Many comic creators, includingGrant Morrison(Arkham Asylum) andFrank Millar(The Dark Knight Returns), found interesting ways to play with Joker in part because his past was so ambiguous. They weren’t beholden to pre-established rules of canon, so the villain could be anything — could arguably become anything they needed.
Again, the main example of when a film told the origin of Joker and did it well was 1989’sBatman.Jack Nicholsongave such maniacal glee to Jack Napier for an ‘80s mob boss feel that is endlessly re-watchable. It worked for what Burton was going for in his own unique, self-contained Gotham. So you have to ask yourself, what are you trying to say by choosing to clear out the muddied waters of Joker’s backstory? What are you adding to the history of stories that have already been done — and done well?
With DC films becoming more like the comics — operating with a series of stories as opposed to focusing on building a single multi-work arc — fans could easily choose to accept or ignore this take from Phillips. But, beyond the public demand for more superhero movies, what’s the point of actually answering the question, “Why so serious?”
