Go Loony

Ah, that was refreshing. Now back to unrelenting negativity.

I saw The Dark Knight this summer, and, well, yes, it is much better than Batman Begins. But it is much, much worse even than The Batman, let alone Batman: The Animated Series.

I'm gonna skip the positive and get right to what my problem is. The Joker. Yes, that's right, I don't like the Clown Prince of Crime, as portrayed in this movie. I'll list my reasons, shall I?

1. The Joker is supposed to be white, his hair green. Maybe the writers/directors had a psychotic aversion to a comic book movie being a comic book movie, but even Frank Miller, who has that same neurotic tic about being taken seriously by mundanes, let the Joker be the Joker. Also, of course, it strikes me as worthy of ridicule--not to say pillory--that they can't let Mr. J be the proper color, but they let Two-Face walk around with no skin on half his face and not instantly die.

2. They seem to think the Joker is merely a force of chaos, who just wants to "watch the world burn." Only, um...he's never been portrayed that way. In "Lovers and Madmen," he's portrayed as a brilliant sociopathic criminal who is helped out of an early midlife crisis by his discovery of his one worthy foe: the Batman. In "Killing Joke," it's revealed that he was once an anxious little nobody, whose overtaxed mind was nly able to cope by the simple expedient of...laughing (or going "Looooony, as lightbulb-battered bug"). That's why he's a sociopath: when he starts to feel the negative reaction a normal person has to the idea of doing evil, he just starts laughing, and the inhibition goes away. Okay, that last bit is my interpretation, but he's been shown to be immune to the Scarecrow's gas.

Incidentally, Scarecrow's gas, slightly modified, probably could have formed the basis of the Joker's gas (which, 3. the bastards decided not to give him). Laughter, after all, is a modified defense mechanism, triggered by fear. Come on, people, are you stupid? Can't you imagine the scene: the Scarecrow, say, has hired the future Joker to help him with a job, but decides to double-cross him, and sprays him with the gas...but it doesn't work! Instead, he starts finding the hallucinations funny ("There's a bunny on the moon," a la "Lovers and Madmen"). That could have been cinematic gold.

4. The Joker likes money, folks, he's not stupid. Yes he'll burn it in a heartbeat for the greater...punchline...but no, he'd never burn it just to prove some kinda point to some nobody gangster. That would be the act of someone who believes in something, and he doesn't believe in anything: he's a Nietzschean superman (seriously, think about it--the only better contender is Luthor, although the movies never get him right, either).

Not a Joker problem, but I also didn't like the whole "give them something to believe in" (that happens to be a lie), thing, from the ending. Come on, guys, this is Bruce we're talking about! He'd be more likely to say, "You see an S on this chest, Jim? You want Hope, move to Metropolis."