The Joker was famous in the Batman comics for not having a true origin story. The closest we came to one was Alan Moore’s “The Killing Joke” with its flashbacks, but even then in the story it questions the reality of those flashbacks due to the Clown Prince of Crime being an unreliable narrator.
Tim Burton’s “Batman” changed that and gave The Joker a controversial origin, while Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” went back to his origins being a mystery. In that, Heath Ledger’s version spins several stories of his youth but it’s made clear most if not all are complete bull.
Turns out though that the studio had cold feet about letting Heath’s Joker just be Joker and not attribute any of actions or choices to be due to a specific childhood trauma – making him much more of a wild card and agent of chaos. Speaking at this past weekend’s Comic-Con@Home, writer David S. Goyer explained the aim that he and Nolan had with the 2008 feature:
“I do remember when we were talking about, ‘Well what if the Joker doesn’t really have an origin story?’. Even after the success of Batman Begins that was considered a very controversial thing and we got a lot of push-back. People were worried.
There were a lot more eyes, both in terms of the world and the studio on that film than there were on Batman Begins. And it’s harder to take risks and it’s harder to subvert expectations in success because people want to protect against failure or they want you to do what you did the first time, but just a little bit different.
One of the scariest things to tell most film executives or even TV executives after having had success in something is, ‘Yeah, we’re not going to do that again. We’re going to do something different’.”
You can see the full clip here. The comments come as Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” is getting back into production in the UK over the next few months.
