>>112685298Honestly I think it’s a tie between Heath and Joaquin. While Caesar and Jack are keeping in step with the trends of the comics at the time, the Heath and Joaquin versions very much feel like a reflection of the larger culture.
Heath’s take spoke to a lot of Bush era paranoia about terrorism and the way the system reacts to itself when faced with threats it can’t predict. Whereas Joaquin is, as we all know, a commentary on how that previous period sent shockwaves of reactionary tribalism throughout society. Both kind of feed into each other (even if the latter is a period piece). As far as Jared’s version goes, I actually think it also speaks to the decade in a different way just by how tone deaf it is. 2015 was kind of around the boiling point of our culture getting sick of the idea that provocative actions equated to deep actions. Leto’s performance is almost a meta example of people losing the substance of what they value. In a way, Leto’s fuck up helped the filmmakers of Joaquin’s version understand what not to do within the same decade.
So basically I would say that the three modern Jokers all form a sort of symbiotic circle which perfectly encapsulates the first 20 years of the millennium.
