Heath Ledger is Not My Favorite Joker…
Anytime The Dark Knight comes up some one says “Heath was so great… he’s the best joker” and all I can think to myself is that I still really really REALLY love Cesar Romero. I grew up on 1960s Batman reruns. My mom watched it as a kid and I did too. We both loved how goofy it was, the theme, the colors, the relationship between Batman and Robin was amazing… and then there were the villains.
Were all the villains good in 1960s Batman? Nope. The Penguin was great, Mr. Freeze was a bore, and every version of Catwoman the show had was sexy… but The Joker was iconic. Cesar Romero is the Joker to me. As much as I love what Mark Hamill did for the character, I really love Cesar Romero’s slapstick take on the clown prince of crime.
What I love most of all is that Cesar Romero was a person of color and nobody made a big deal about it. Nobody said “Oh but The Joker is white!” Today you can’t have Donald Glover play Spider-Man because he’s black… but nobody said anything about a Latino playing the greatest comic book villain of all time for YEARS. He set the standard for how The Joker should be, and would be portrayed for the next few decades. Until the 1980s rolled around, every version of The Joker was like Cesars. That’s powerful stuff.
I’m not trying to say Heath’s joker was bad. I like it as a performance, I think it’s just funny enough, just crazy enough and of course it’s stylish too. That suit is amazing after all. BUT, he’s played differently from every other Joker that came before him. Even Nicholson’s which was dark, was far funnier than Heath’s. That’s the thing about The Joker… His main goal isn’t to cause chaos for the sake of chaos… it’s to make himself laugh. It’s a twisted sense of humor thing… He thinks the world is a joke and he’s the punch line. That never comes across in Heath’s take on him.
These new photos of Heath came out… the ones all the posters from the Dark Knight were based on and that’s what inspired me to write this. Oh and by no means think that if you like Heath the most I’m saying you’re wrong. I can see the appeal of liking his performance… he won the Oscar for it after all. I guess it’s kind of like The Doctor on Doctor Who. Everyone has THEIR doctor… Everyone has their Joker too… and Cesar Romero is mine. (on a side note, he also rocked a bitchin’ mustache under the make up.)
