A Dance with the Devil In the Pale Moonlight

So...as a random nerd who's opinion matters very little how do I feel about the new look of The Joker?:(sorry for the perez-coke...it was the sharpest version of the image)

I think...after much internal debate...I like it. Because, even if a bit revisionist, it gets the essential idea of The Joker right. Just think of the basic distilled premise of The Joker:

Psychotic gangster/hitman who is out for revenge against the gangsters (or sometimes Batman) who put a botched hit on him (or sometimes accidentally almost killed him) and who decides, because the attempted murder made him look like a clown, he should kill people in clown-ey ways.

The fucked up face and dark look definitely get across the idea of a psychotic dude out for revenge. From the casting/promotions it's pretty easy to tell there'll be some high-level Gotham City government/mafia conspiracy involved which The Joker is taking revenge on so...that's good. What'll probably have people up in arms though is the seeming lack of the whole chemical component, which of course The Joker later distills into the chemical which can essentially turn anyone into laughing psychotics. But whatever, so many incarnations (such as the above) miss out on the important, essential revenge element I'm willing to let the chemical thing slide.
You see the revenge thing is pivotal to why The Joker is Batman's arch-nemesis because The Joker's motivations are so close to Batman's.

The Joker starts out for revenge against a certain person or group who wronged him and usually once that's done is still thirsty for that revenge and takes it out on the police, or Batman or the townsfolk or maybe Batman's girlfriend. Basically whoever annoys him a little is worthy of the same amount of revenge as the person who tried to kill him. Keep in mind in most incarnations he throws acid in Harvey Dent's face just cause he's his prosecutor.

But wait, that's just Batman. Guy out for revenge for his murdered family, usually gets the guys who did it in the first few comics/episodes/movies and then decides to take revenge on crime as a whole. Another guy who decides to motivate his life solely on the pursuit of revenge and most likely can't stop even if he wanted to.

So having The Joker in the series is like Batman's checks and balances. He has to justify every step of revenge with science, detective work, hard evidence, police approval (even if just after he's done) and moral authority because there's this other dude doing the same thing without that who's considered a psychotic criminal. Brilliant.

Nicholson had the best previous look for The Joker, hand's down. Though, Cesar Romero's "mustache under makeup" thing always creeped me out as a kid, doubly because my father is a clown with a mustache but would never cover it up with weird makeup.

Nicholson also had the revenge angle down pat with the whole Jack Palance story. But there was something missing that this look raises fears about as well...

the funny.

One thing essential about The Joker which only the Mark Hammil cartoon one really got right was the fact that he can actually tell some good jokes, albethey gallows humor as he...well...probably hangs someone.

As essential to his motivations as revenge is, so is humor to his ultimate downfall.

In every awesome incarnation The Joker hates Batman not just because he always foils his plans, but because he never laughs at his jokes. And he tells some jokes even the audience laughs at.

Batman not laughing not only establishes his overall badassness but, usually (except maybe in the cases when The Joker commits suicide) opens up the Joker's death which tends to involve Batman driving him nuts by laughing at him/one of his jokes.

While I like that Ledger look...can you imagine that telling a joke?

While I support you Nolan, a Joker without a purple suit is just basically The Crow.

I can't believe I wrote this much based on pure speculation. I love you summer.

Cam