Because it’s important to be nuanced when you’re a psychopath

So, Heath Ledger is going to be the Joker, facing off against Christian Bale’s Dark Knight.

I’m still not sure if I think it’s the best casting choice, but I’m no longer convinced it’ll be a nightmare.

Why? Because of the following.

He adds "It's going to be more nuanced and dark and more along the lines of a Clockwork Orange kind of feel. Which is, I think, what the comic book was after: less about his laugh and more about his eyes."

He’s absolutely right. It is about the eyes. They are, after all, windows to the soul.

The Joker isn’t scary because of what he does, believe it or not. There are other villains who have just as impressive of a body count, or even higher. Heck, the villain in the DC Universe with the highest body count of human beings may very well be Mongul and the Cyborg, Hank Henshaw.

(And no, the Anti-Monitor doesn’t count. Erasing universes is an entirely different matter than killing folks.)

The Joker is scary because of why he does what he does. The Joker is scary because he is an absolute psychotic. He does not share a world with anyone else. His worldview is unique to himself.

It’s all the more important if you take the Killing Joke version of his origin. The Joker’s insanity is all the more terrifying because of the fact that he was just an ordinary person who had One. Really. Bad. Day.

In my last post, I talked about what makes a hero. And the Killing Joke shows us just what kind of a hero Jim Gordon is. It takes a hero to not break when being a cop in the city of Gotham. It takes a hero to withstand what the Joker put him through and not break to his level. Batman couldn’t manage it. Jim Gordon did. I know that I couldn’t. If someone did to Cordelia, or the sibling on the way, what the Joker did to Barbara Gordon, I would want that person’s lungs in my hands.

Heath Ledger being cast as the Joker is significant to the mythos of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But the casting of Gary Oldman as Gordon is just as important. I hope that Nolan and company realize that. There’s no way for the events of Killing Joke to play out in the movie in a natural, organic way, but I want to see the importance of Gordon to Gotham City.

Must we really wait until 2008?