See, I think that's what's great about the Nicholson Joker. He walks that tight rope of the campy, goofy, trickster with Romero and the serious, preachy, terrorist with Ledger. We get a wide range from Jack Nicholson in that two hours, something that Leto's minimal screen time never allowed. Yeah, yeah, the long revolver is goofy but that wasn't a defining moment for Nicholson's Joker. He has others as well, a full spectrum of range. How about burning the mob guy alive with his hand buzzer then talking alone to the corpse? How about his reveal scene where he gleefully keeps firing into Grissom's dead body. How about the scene before that where the doctor is unwrapping the gauze on the Joker's face and he gets a glimpse of what he has become, breaks down crying, then suddenly becomes mad with laughter? His little infomercial where he's showcasing his lethal products that's poisoning the city? That is pure Joker, more so than Ledger acting like a terrorist with his shaky cam home videos or Leto cackling HONKA HONKA. Nicholson gives you scary, weird, pure joy, disgust, etc. at the drop of the hat, sometimes within the same scene. He can be as harmless as Romero to as frightening as Ledger, and back again. He also has substance. His whole philosophy about beauty, death and art is quite brilliant if you allow yourself to look into it. I love how he starts out as vain and self obsessed, but once he encounters Batman and becomes deformed, it brings out the insanity that was always festering underneath to the point where he wants to inflict this distortion on everything around him. In TDK, the Joker wanted to make Gotham's soul as ugly as his was. In 1989, the Joker wants to quite literally make the city as ugly as he is. Joker was scarring people physically and psychologically and killing mobsters long before Ledger or Leto.
If you asked me years ago who was the best, I'd undoubtedly say Ledger, but as the Dark Knight ages, the less I like him. He's great and the clear stand out of that film, but I can only take so much of the tongue flicking and the philosophical monologues about human beings and society. He just comes off as one note, even in humorous scenes (since the humor is almost always dark or gallows humor). Maybe because almost every villain since 2008 has tried to ape him. There's also a lot of things that they clearly aped from Nicholson and Burton, i.e. the mob scenes, pencil vs. pen, getting his face wounded by the Dark Knight's gauntlets, giving away/burning money, defiantly facing death in the streets in the form of the Batwing/Batpod, etc.
Where Ledger and Leto went all method and try hard to be the Joker, I feel like it just came naturally to Nicholson. Almost to the point where he could just sleep through the role and still be intimidating and memorable. He also had more style and flair. That's the difference really. I think audiences got to see more range with the Nicholson Joker than with any of the others, certainly in terms of emotion and character. You get a clear cut beginning, middle and end to his character.
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And visually? He's just stunning. Like Keaton's Batman, every shot of him was pure artistry as far as film goes. The choices in costume from scene to scene, the way he's lit, it's just really well done. Whereas Romero refused to shave off his mustache, Ledger looked like a dirty bum that got into his grandma's old makeup and Leto got all tatted and blinged up, Nicholson is pretty faithful to all the different interpretations of comic Joker in appearance. It comes down to the look, costumes and gaudy Joker paraphernalia. There's more to the character than the others, especially in the details. His personal gift with letter handwritten in crayon like a 6 year old. His henchmen have personality, from the card rankings to their jackets, to the mob/gang war inflicted wounds on their face. He's got that lucky deck of playing card that influence his cuff links and buttons. He's got stuffed dogs and seagulls to deck out his lair (which is the same factory he was created in, now defaced like he was).
I know people, especially younger critics, love to say that Nicholson played himself but I think there's a clear distinction between Jack as himself and Jack Nicholson the actor playing the Joker. Maybe that argument flies in the first 20 mins where he's just playing a cliched, narcissistic gangster, but once he's shot through the face and falls into the vat of chemicals, I cease to see Jack. Prior to 1989, I never saw Nicholson make insane collages of dead, grinning victims or shake his ass in defiance to Batman whilst talking to a gargoyle. Even beyond the make up and prosthetics, that was pure Joker.
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