Warner Bros' Meddling Nearly Ruined Nolan's The Dark Knight
Of all four Oscar-winning actors who have played a live-action Joker, Heath Ledger's may be the most iconic.
But when making The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. almost went a different direction with the character – a direction that may have ruined the movie.
The Joker never gets a proper backstory in Christopher Nolan 's The Dark Knight – and that's what makes him terrifying.
The closest fans got to a backstory was his monologues that began with, "You wanna know how I got these scars?" But the stories were always different, leaving Joker in ambiguity.
He serves as an unreliable narrator, leaving him simply as an "agent of chaos" who "just wants to watch the world burn."
According to David S. Goyer, who worked with Nolan on the film's story, said the studio almost went a different direction. They wanted to go deeper into Joker's history, allowing the Batman Begins sequel to be an origin story for the villain.
He said when they brought up the idea of making the film without an origin, it got a little pushback. "That was considered a very controversial thing," he said. "People were worried."
When Batman and the Joker first hit the big screen in 1989's groundbreaking Batman, Jack Nicholson was essentially in the lead role as Joker. It delved deep into his backstory as a gangster who by happenstance was directly tied to Bruce Wayne's traumatic youth.
Goyer and Nolan eventually got their way with The Dark Knight, and the Joker was left in perfect ambiguity. Gordon's police officers can't identify him. Batman doesn't know his motives. And fans have no idea who the man with the clown makeup really is.
Allowing him to be a virtually nameless villain perfectly fit into the themes of the movie. It was all about dark conspiracies and a complete lack of knowledge, personified by its villain.
His ambiguity also allowed fans to theorize about the origins of the Joker, with many saying he was likely ex-military.
In a movie that was already two and a half hours and filled to the brim with convoluted plot, it would have been messy trying to fit an entire villain origin story in there. On top of that, the film also essentially served as an origin story for Harvey Dent as Two-Face.
For fans of the Batman comics, this was the perfect version of the Joker. Like Ledger's version, the main continuity of the comics showcases the Joker as an ambiguous character who rarely has a backstory.
And when he does, it comes from the unreliable Joker himself, so fans never really know what to trust.