Damn straight.

Ledger's Joker is, I am pretty sure, the first villain in a superhero movie who actually scared me even a little. He's stared into the abyss, all right...

Bah!

I think the background story weighs in too much here, Kevin. Maybe you are scared of ghosts? ;D

I just got out of a matinée and I'm still creeped out.
The exploration of good and evil had a lot of depth here, I think. The Joker really felt like a devil, which is an unpopular way to portray evil right now. I think there was something uncompromisingly moral about this story. Should be interesting to see how this philosophy holds up against the Watchmen movie.

Ledger's performance seems a perfect reflection of an era when world leaders come across with all the depth of comic book characters. How fitting that he portrays The Joker as a completely broken man with a life whittled down to a few personality traits that are the only things keeping him going.

Bruce Wayne used The Batman to not only right wrongs but to repair his own psyche as best he could. Joker did not have that level of self-awareness.

mth @2: I don't think that backstory is what's weighing on me, neither Heath Ledger's death nor the Joker's backstory in the comics (or even the previous movies), since I've neither read nor watched the older versions.[1] I don't know why watching a recently-dead actor on-screen should be any different than watching any other movie with a now-dead actor. No, I found that performance genuinely creepy. The Joker's loopiness reminded me too much of the nature in which I get loopy when I've been running on seriously too little sleep for weeks, like four or five hours a night, and stressed out of my mind.

orchard @3: "As a devil" is an unpopular way to portray evil right now? I don't know. I've been frustrated with how little motivation the villains in the movies I've seen seem to have. For some reason them not even bothering to explain the Joker made him easier to believe, but I think that's something that can only be done occasionally -- and must be done exceedingly well -- for it to work right. I personally would like to see more well-developed "evil" characters -- or possibly no truly evil characters at all, just people with conflicting aims. I agree that I will be interested to see how Watchmen tackles this. (And the theater at which I saw The Dark Knight yesterday showed us the trailers for a dozen utterly forgettable action movies and not the Watchmen trailer, damn them.)


[1] Though I am now curious to see Jack Nicholson's version of the Joker.

(aside: can we get numbers on the comments, please? or cute io9-style backrefs?)

Following on, the Joker actually lampoons the idea of explanatory backstory, telling two different incompatible versions of his own origin and trying to tell a third (to Batman himself) late in the movie.

One of the great touches is that we see the dread the Joker inspires in the characters, especially the state agents like Gordon and Dent and their people, when they realize that the Joker is somehow not in their systems. No fingerprint records, no DNA links to anyone known; literally out of nowhere. That clearly scares them as much as anything he's done.

Ledger's Joker also scared me. The level of pure evil didn't come off as cartoony at all, unlike previous batman movies (IMHO).

you know I cant say for sure Ledger's death doesn't influence my feelings on it. You'd think that would add, if anything, an air of tragedy to the character. Which there isn't. At all. Just visceral evil.

Talia, it's an interesting question. I was never that aware of Heath Ledger when he was alive, so I don't know if my own experience is useful. I was mostly impressed by how he underplayed the zaniness, and how he largely did what the improv world calls "playing low-status" (adopting the posture and mannerisms of a subservient rather than dominant role). It made the Joker much, much creepier.

I'd agree. The Joker completely made the movie, but in a small way, without being over-the-top and all. As a villain, he had little left to care about, and that only made his "cruelty and glee" all the more creepy.

I didn't even know who Ledger was, much less that he'd died, until I saw the dedication at the end of the movie. It made no difference whatsoever to my estimation of an absolutely brilliant character portrayal.

I wonder though at describing the Joker as less than human. Y'all use phrases like "completely broken" and "little left to care about". Those all assume that he was once normal, caring, or 'human' as we often use that term, and something had to happen to him that made him ("reduced" him) into what we see now.

But every aspect of the character defies that assumption, sometimes consciously, as when the Joker lies about his own backstory. He has no traces to a past, no record of prints or DNA. He comes from nowhere, as Supplanter says above, and that is what terrifies the lawfuls - they were doing as you are doing now, searching for past humanity on the assumption that there WAS some, there must have been, because nobody can just turn out that evil, right? People start out good by default, and evil always has a reason, isn't that what we're taught to believe?

The other side of having no rules and no empathy, is freedom. Freedom to act at will, at whim, and do whatever needs to be done to accomplish something. From that perspective, the Joker has the most power, and all his opponents are constrained to greater or lesser degree by their rules, their expectations, and what they choose not to do. The cops are bound by laws, partnerships, family and duty. The citizens by all that and their expectations of normality on top of it; the rich guests' terror at Wayne's fundraiser, for instance, comes partly from the shock that common criminals could get to them of all people in such a 'safe' place. Batman is the most dangerous opponent, and the most tempting, because he will break almost all the rules except one. That one must be really aggravating to the Joker, like having a speed limiter on a Maserati.

From that view, then, the Joker has the most freedom, the most imagination, the most creativity, all traits we value in humans. From his perspective I'm sure he is more than human, more than the crawling predictable little ants that laugh at sitcoms and swarm the ferries trying to get away from imagined threats. He's overjoyed to have someone like Batman in the world, because he's interesting enough to play with.