>>110929635And also
>What's interesting about all the best live-action portrayals is that they all hit on a different facet of the characterYou can chalk that up to how the character was written during these periods.
Romero is exactly what the Joker was in the 60s, when his propensity for pranks and actual comedy was his strongest facet.
Likewise, Nicholson is Bronze Age Joker personified. His plan to poison the city's entire cosmetics supply and his frequent use of flesh-tone makeup, leaving him the only person in the city still wearing make-up, is exactly the kind of crazy Joker logic that led to some of his best stories like Laughing Fish, as well as the stuff he does that are basically darker twists on Romero's Joker.
I think people dismiss Nicholson's Joker a lot on the idea that he was just playing himself, but, half-baked romance aside, his Joker was really as perfect a depiction of Bronze Age Joker as you could get.
And Ledger is a product of the turn of the character that happened post-Killing Joke, when he was much more dramatic and far more murderous, and often acted as if he was trying to prove a point about the uglyness of mankind.
I'm with you that The Dark Knight does this much better than The Killing Joke (even if it has a lot of weaker subplots that dillude this aspect).
Personally, my favorite aspect of The Killing Joke is that it humanized The Joker by making him pathetic and tired, someone who got tired of going through the supervillain motions and who couldn't offer anything more than just depraved crimes any sufficiently minded thug could do (which makes the fact that these depraved, tiresomely unimaginative crimes and killing sprees all he does these days all the worse). To me it works as the last Batman vs Joker story, not something that should have changed the character forever.
I wonder if Phoenix's Joker is going to influence the next depictions of the character like Ledger's did.
