THE PROBLEM WITH JACK NICHOLSON 'S JOKER 

I wish we could have another jack Nicholson joker film with Billy dee Williams as two face. We were robbed!

Aperantley he would have somehow come back in Batman returns.

After seeing "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker," I've been seriously considering the possibility that "Jokolson" could return for Keaton's final Batman film, reemerging - via a brain transplant or some other sort of sci-fi technology - in the body of a different Joker, with that actor doing an approximation of Jack Napier's distinctive voice. Knowing that he could indefinitely switch bodies would make the Joker think he was basically a god, and that would ramp up his insanity all the more. It would also be a final moral test for Batman, since he'd have another chance to master his anger and NOT kill the Joker.

@@SeasideDetective2 wait a final keaton batman movie is possible?

@@milosbatmanvideos I think so.

I can't believe I never got that. I guess Joker doesn't have a non-pun civilian name. Unless you count Melvin White.

@@curtisleblanc5897 Joseph Kerr? Oh, wait a minute... 😑

@@acrodave9287 When I first heard about that one the guy who told me called it "Joe Kerr" and it was obvious right away that it was a pun name Joker made up. I'm so upset because I really liked the name Jack Napier.

​@curtisleblanc5897 WHITE. Also when was he Melvin. Arthur Fleck isn't a pun.

It was also in reference to Jack Nicholson and Alan Napier.

Right, Jack Nicholson's Joker being Joker, nothing is ever as it seems. Jack Nicholson's Joker wasn't in love with Vicki Vale, he stalked her, kidnapped her, he tried to burn her face with his acid flower in the art museum and he tried to drop her from the top of the cathedral with his "Let me lend you a hand" deadly joke, and the Joker in comics did stalk and kidnap women, too. The Joker stalked Dinah Lance in The Joker #4 (1975) written by Elliot Maggin and art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Miller's Joker had a henchwoman Bruno and kidnapped Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller and there was Joker's punk girl hostage Shirley in Legends #4 (1987), etc. Also Cesar Romero's campy version always had a henchwoman following him and Heath Ledger's edgy version went after Rachel Dawes and Jared Leto's version had a Harley Quinn and Joaquin Phoenix's version has a Harley Quinn.

Yeah. Joker is gay man. That sh*t is canon. He went after Vale out of narcissism.

​@@soulmechanics7946well it's true he can't get enough Batman

@@soulmechanics7946 nah Joker cares not about your gender bs

I also think that it was done to mess with Batman

Lolol

I wholeheartedly agree with you there

You don't inherently need to be a comic fan to create a good character. Comics should be a source of good bones but shouldn't be the sole make up of the meat on the character

And his movies are the most boring Batman

Burton did use Killing Joke and other comics for inspiration, he just wasn’t an avid reader.

Bob gun........click kaboom! Going to need a minute boys.

I love the murder by electric hand buzzer scene.

"Bob, my gun"!! Pow!!

It's me, sugar bumps...

I agree. He "loved" Vicki the way Dracula "loved" Mina and his other brides. At best we're looking at a psychopathic monster going through the motions in a vain attempt to reclaim some scrap of his humanity. It's far more tragic and pathetic than romantic.

Well said. It accurately depicts how psychopaths operate by viewing love interests as cardboard cutouts and demonstrating their "love" by attempting to mold them into their own image.

As a clinical psychologist, I'm inclined to agree with you. However, one important aspect of Nicholson's joker is the sheer ignorance he displays throughout the film with his actions. That characteristic becomes a bit of a nuanced sort of charm. I don't know if it was be design or by happenstance but they did succeed in making a very unique Joker. One that will never truly be replicated. Heath Ledger's performance was also a one off unique take onnthe character. Motivated by something entirely different. I would gladly write a thesis on Ledger's Joker. Much like a big onion, his take on the crime prince is very VERY layered.

Aye. Narcissists simply can’t DO love.

@@The_Hulkster That could be interesting. I have a hard time seeing Ledger's Joker as more than a garden variety anarchist. He gives a great performance, but I struggle to see the character as-written to be the Joker.

​@@The_Hulkster As a certified forklift operator, I agree

I'm not a diehard fan of Nicholson's Joker, but his portrayal never struck me as a lovesick puppy. He disfigured Alicia with acid, and went after Vicki after Alicia threw herself out the window. If he wasn't the one who pushed her... He dragged these women into his madness, abused them physically and mentally, put them in life-threatening situations agains and again... The dynamic wasn't that different from how Joker treats Harley Quinn.

I still think Mark Hamill did an amazing job voicing the Joker.

The arkham asylum joker looks like Jack too I think but with features of the comic.

Except that Hamill did Joker far better than Nicholson.

@@scottdoesntmatter4409 I don't think so they both were great

@@thomasgoree7976 Nicholson can do menacing, but not funny.

Holy crap, he's a straight Sander Cohen (from Bioshock)

Technically she killed herself from having to deal with him, but he wasn't that broken up about it for long.

I, too, love the fact that everything Jack's Joker did had an element of vaudeville to it. It was all based on a mixture of traditional shtick and various other gimmicks, some of which even push the envelope for a "children's" character. (There's an element of burlesque, too, during the cathedral sequence. The Joker removes Vicki's shoes and then her coat, then leaves them behind for the pursuing Batman to find, turning some psychological screws in the hero by insinuating he's stripping the love interest nude.) Aside from exactly where in his pants that "long gun" was stored, there's some subtle scatological humor during the parade when the Smylex gas is being released from the balloons, since, with a little imagination, you can "see" that the green gas is emerging from the baby's diaper. Even when the Joker's assassins dress as mimes, it's a visual gag of sorts ("silent but deadly").

Its a shame that the Guy who played the second best Joker ever wasn't even allowed to call himself The Joker. Honestly, fuck Warner!

Not quite

Absolutely. Keaton IS Batman and Burton made the only 2 Batman movies I acknowledge... That's why his movies are timeless while Nolans and the others are already dated.

@@sideskroll lol burtons have been dated since 97

I totally agree

Yup. He treated her pretty much the same way he treats Harley.

I remember seeing a drawing from Tim Burton which has The Joker carrying a woman who looks like a female Joker (makeup and all) but with long green hair and colorful polka dot outfits. That would've been cool to see.

@@brandonspain12345 Maybe that was supposed to be his (Burton's) version of Harley... or maybe it was supposed to be Martha Wayne Joker from Flashpoint... based on the description, anyway... don't see why Joker Prime would be carrying the Flashpoi... nevermind.

He should have channeled that instead of clown wannabe gangster.

that is actually how it looks to me at end of Joker 2019 when all the clowns made him there leader all thing look like a beginning of a cult and that is way there are going with a story

Would love to see someone make a Joker portrayal with some heavy Manson influences. The master manipulator, the cult leader, and how he’d switch between mental hospitals and prisons cause they couldn’t figure out if he was insane or not…

@@DH_Artist well, Joaquin Phienix's Joker has a pretty Mansony take. He was raised in poverty by an abusive mother, had mental health issues, turned famous for killing celebrities and had a cult of followers.

Dude...that's a burn! 🔥

it has to do w/ the Batman version that actually kills his enemies. 🕸Tim wanted that

I never like him dying in the end ...arch-enemies should never die. When he dies- so does Batman

Well again, Jack Nicholson is scary.

That's exactly why the video is here, to prove this.

That's because the video should be called "The problem with Tim Burton's Joker" and in case, Vee Infuso makes some valid points. I don't agree with going against the Joker infatuation for Vicky Vale: he wants her because she is perfect in the standards of beauty and he wants to deform her like he did with her previous girlfriend and with the art gallery (also, the collages he maniacally makes). Consider how he saves Francis Bacon's piece in the museum.

@@emidom2004 Yeah, he isn't in love, he's looking at her like a painter might look at fine linen canvases or paint brushes. He wants to consumer her, bend her to his purposes, and ultimately discard her. That was pretty clearly telegraphed with the alicia hunt subplot.

​@@emidom2004 he definitely has some bad takes in this video. like criticizing the whole "organized crime" thing, claiming that "following orders and rules" doesn't fit the joker character.. but that's only true for Jack Napier before he become the Joker, after he falls into the vat of chemicals he kills his competitions and takes over, while spiraling further down into chaotic evil, committing actions that are less "organized crime" and more straight up terrorism. he also contradicts his own argument by saying "I've always thought of the Joker as more of a Could-Be Cult Leader", a point that makes little sense as a cult is no less organized than the crime mob. in fact, a "cult leader" would indicate strong religious and/or political motivations and ideological fanaticism. cultism must be formed from some sort of belief system. which to me seems like it would be the complete opposite of the joker, who is often traditionally portrayed as lacking any sense of morality or coherent philosophy to his chaos. my point being, the "cult leader" shouldn't make more sense than the "mob leader", they are not actually that different. also, on the "i prefer the killer being a nobody"; while i know many share this opinion, i would like to point out that at the time of murdering his parents Jack WAS a "nobody", so that still holds true. and he would have continued to be a nobody, until he created Batman which then ends up creating the Joker. nothing is meaningful until someone interprets or inserts meaning onto it. the significance or insignificance of Bruce's parents murderer is completely relative, even if he was not to become the joker, he still would be an active person in the criminal underground of Gotham as any other villain, and who would have just gained the bragging rights of having successfully assassinated the richest family in the city. his character doesn't get Thanos snapped out of existence in-universe just because his role of "parent murderer" is over. the whole premise of "faceless criminal" is also somewhat hard to take seriously in a universe where you have The Penguin, Bane, Mr Freeze, The Riddler, etc and a multitude of various masked vigilantes all over the place. it's difficult to make the argument of a "nobody" in a reality where everything is incredibly theatrical.

You sir are a man of fine taste.

Agreed

That's what Jack Nicholson told Michael Keaton. They said that Michael Keaton was worried that he wouldn't pull off a good performance as Batman and they said that Jack Nicholson pulled him aside and told him Kid Just Work The Suit!

Words of a master.

@@thomasgoree7976 And then Michael Keaton became the best Batman of all time.

​@@philhelm1318💯

Exactly! They both had a touch of class, they both made crazy but intelligent plans, only getting foiled by either Batman's plot armor or because of their half-witted subordinates. Cesar Romero as Joker Could have been a LOT darker, the actor had the ability, but the writers didn't have that kind of vision, and the TV networks of the 1960s never would have allowed him to.

That's the thing, for 30+ plus years people had an imagine in their kind of what batman and joker were. Burton was able to take all that and give a very dark twist that worked and allowed for what came after

jack nicholson does a great joker but the flaw is he is just a crazy gangster. in the tv show he was a brilliant electrical engineer and an all around really smart guy.

@@perry92964 in the movie he is also extremely smart, not just a crazy gangster. When batman figures out who he is and pulls his bio, he figures that out, that's how he knows the chemical x isn't in one item but via a combination of multiple.

And a little influence from mark hamil’s voice but not full on replicate it.

Cameron Monaghan's Joker (Jerome/Jeremiah) was what you are describing, too many people sleep on his performance

I think if anybody can give us that on the big screen it's definitely James Gunn

The DCAU franchise and the 'Batman: Arkham' video game series did that, especially the latter.

that's leto

villian of the week? Wait till they get a load of me…

The only way I saw leto's joker tie into batfleck was with the theory of leto playing Tim Drake

I felt they nicely complimented each other - they’re the same age (the actors are), but whilst ‘Batfleck’ seems older and jaded even beyond his advancing years and totally beyond Gotham’s bullsh*t at that point in his career, Leto’s Joker felt corruptly youthful, as if he _physically_ thrived on crime like a life of malevolence was nothing but an extended vacation to him. I’d actually have kept Leto but TOTALLY lost the ‘gangbanger’ aspect of the tats and the bling. Elements of his costume I would have kept too but yeah, his look definitely needed to be reevaluated.

Or The Joker killed so many many people he didn't remember that particular killing.

I don't think his Joker was actually crazy. He was a dark nihilist who just wanted to see everything and everyone burn. He just wanted to mess with people in the most cruel way. I would say he was a psychopath, but he was able to execute complex long term plans that require tremendous discipline, something that psychopaths tend to struggle with over the long term.

@@VTdarkangel I'm not saying it wasn't a deliberate choice, just the wrong one.

"What til they get a load of me"

@@VTdarkangel Psychopaths are known to possess above average intelligence, and being proficient in analysis and manipulation. Heath's Joker was the perfect archetype of a psychopathic criminal. Not necessarily the classic Joker, but a realistic one, just what Nolan was going for with his trilogy.

@ghedebaronsamedi My understanding of psychopaths is that they are usually very intelligent, but because they are incapable of compassion and empathy, they often struggle with long-term plans that require discipline and interdependence with other people. However, I'm no psychologist, so I definitely could be wrong.

I love Phoenix’s movie, but I don’t see it as a Joker movie

nonsense its terrible

This can't be understated. At the time there were only Superman movies, and the old Superman, Batman, Hulk, and Wonder Woman television shows. I'm sure I'm missing some, but those were probably the most prominent.

@@philhelm1318 There were 70's Spiderman movies that were totally my jam for ages. Also I was a huge fan of the 80's Superboy series. Green Hornet was a show too. I think that's all of them covered between you and me. Most of the time it was years between comic content. Sometimes decades to see a chacter return. We realy are living in a Golden Age.

And plus isn't Joker known for having crazy fixations on some one sometimes! It isn't that he was in love with Vicky vale he just had a insane fixation on her

@@thomasgoree7976 @lowlowseesee I def agree. Even when I was a kid I NEVER looked at it like he was in love. It just seemed like she was another thing to him that he wanted to possess.

exactly. there was no Joker love story and definitely no triangle. he was going to melt her face on move on to the next pretty blonde. she was distraction not a motivation

Wrong, dumbass That was a great change, because it motivates Batman to have more of a hatred towards him and has more reason to want to kill him and.stop his crimes.

It's probably just an exaggeration but is a phrase he's fond. It's not like it's that integral.

I think the others he kills aren't 'prey' to him. Like if I was some psycho myself going after a particular person, anybody else I wasted along the way wouldn't even register to me as more important than fences I cut or doors I kicked in.

​@@routergray7041well said. You shoot some rando in the face and the only meaningful moment to ya is the rorschach like blood and brain matter splatter pattern looks like two black bears giving each other a high five, and it reminds you of all those times in mental hospitals, so you stand on the body and draw a sad face in the blood to ruin that image

Maybe they were the only married couple with a child he ever killed. I guess he wasn't a street thief for that long before joining the mob.

Hmmm

I think it was just an ad lib based on the idea that he knows Batman is obviously younger than him.

He said see you around kid. It's not everyday you kill a mother and father in front of their son. He probably knew then that Batman was that kid. Whether he knew who 'that kid' was is ambiguous.

Heath Ledger's joker literally described Jack Nicolson's The Shining when he told the first version of how he got these scars.

I remember seeing Batman Returns with my cousin. When the dead baby grows into the penguin and you see it for the first time I remember thinking how freaky he looked. I loved Danny DeVito in Twins and seeing him in this was like WTH? My cousin screamed it freaked her out so bad! 😂

Agreed I would love to see that version of Penguin used in main continuity after a Crisis event.

Its Danny Devito what's not to love rite lol

I've always loved Jack's, "I'm glad he's dead!"

Well he did kill a guy with a pen in front of dozens of people

☝🏼 💯

Since WB is Making Joker 2 Inthink they should do a 3 jokers story,where they have multiple jokers.

@@marvelstarwarsfan8410 yup have Phoenix, Leto ....man I can't help to think maybe Jack do one more movie be included for a role...be too awesome

Psh there was absolutely no doubt that Jack would’ve killed it as Joker. That’s what got the movie green-lit. The real controversy was over Keaton as Batman.

That is because Keaton had just come off the heels of Playing Beetlejuice, so people thought he would be better suited for the joker. They couldn't see him as the serious Batman after he was so hilarious playing Beetlejuice.

With this argument then Jim Carrey’s Riddler was the best performance of his career.

Never cared for Ledger's "cool kid" psycho Joker...

​​​​@@sideskrollt sure how or why you took heaths version as "cool kid" , but that is your opinion and I respect that. To me heaths joker was had overtones of goverment trained, very intelligent, knew the system well, and most certainly had military training ( its very obvious). To me he would of been a "brain" in either C.I.A. or NSA based on his use of aporia in the opening scene with bank robbery ( uses an old tatic "game theory" against other small timers/bank robbers, a detail often missed in nolans version) He is always one or two steps ahead of anyone else in the film also, and he does indeed figure out who Batman is before the end with excellent attention to detail ( done on purpose by Nolan, one of his staples in his films, subtle) when rachel gets thrown out the window, joker later says "you know for a second there, I really thought you were Harvey" " The way you threw yourself after her!" And "Does Harvey know about you and his little bunny?!" Implying he is aware that rachel/batman have a connection possibly a history/romance. Wouldnt of been hard to do some digging at that point ( off screen of course) and look into Rachels past and see that a close childhood friend was Bruce Wayne and add that up lol. I think it was done very subtle, but ledgers Joker knew who batman was. Had we got a chance to see more of heath I have a strong feeling that would of been a future scene, joker making bats aware that he knows who he is ( been done before, an old staple in series) So again I think I understand your logic about "cool kid", the hair, the style of Heath, the messed up face paint, etc. Its all done on purpose, to distract. For a man who said "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?" He did indeed have a plan/agenda and the style of execution of said plans is what leads me to think he was ex military ( possibly a veteran) or goverment. Also Nolan wanted a very realistic version of batman for 3 films. The way the character of Joker has usually been depicted can easily suggest superior intelligence making him a possibilty for any type of character, or skill set.

Its a very harley quinn-ish thing if you think about it

For me what’s wrong with him is the fact that he’s a mobster and overall his interest with Viki Vale.

@@marvelstarwarsfan8410 what's wrong with that, oh you'd prefer him to be interested in Bruce Wayne.

Ok you caught it too… I thought my psychosis was acting up again or some sort of #mrballen secret 5:49

I always thought that Joker has multiple personality disorder. Plus , I remember in one comic there were actually THREE different Jokers.

Yeah I agree I didn’t like this choice when I saw the movie for the first time.

Tim Burton's 1985 original script treatment with Julie Hickson was his Batman origin story that would have been the first Burton Batman movie, but WB wanted Batman (1989) writer Sam Hamm's script that instead treats Batman's origin as a mystery and tells Joker's origin. As Sam Hamm said in Back Issue 113 (2019), ""You don't start with Batman's origin. That's the mystery. Batman is a mysterious vigilante, a shadow, a rumor. He has the Gotham underworld in a panic. Which happens to be exactly the way he was introduced in Detective Comics #27 [1939]." But modern fanboys don't even read Detective Comics #27 [1939] by Bill Finger, they read the Batman: Year One (1986) origin story by Frank Miller and they complain about Tim Burton not showing Batman's origin when it was Tim Burton's job to direct Sam Hamm's script instead of his Batman origin script with Julie Hickson. The Batman (1989) script was written in 1986. Alan Moore made up that "multiple choice" Joker origin line in The Killing Joke (1988).

Because all nerds know who Batman is, while Joker's origin was never established. That what makes movie interesting.

I like the types of actors where the Joker isn't played by type casts like Nicholson and Leto and are hardly recognizable when playing the role. Namely Cesar Romero, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix.