To celebrate the incoming Tenet, Empire Online presents Nolan Week – looking back at the films of a modern-day filmmaking icon. In early 2008, nobody quite knew what was in store for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Batman Begins sequel. But when Empire got its first glimpse at Heath Ledger’s Joker months before release, it was clear something very special was on the cards. Read our piece from January 2008 introducing an all-new take on the iconic villain – and talking with Nolan, Michael Caine, and Ledger himself all about it.
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In a vacant office block on the west side of LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago – temporary production base of a movie that our press pass insists is called Rory's First Kiss, but everyone knows is really The Dark Knight – Empire is shown into a high-ceilinged, wood-panelled room: the kind of place you'd imagine very important decisions were once taken by powerful, polyester-clad men back in the 1970s. We've ostensibly been invited here to observe director Christopher Nolan at work in the street outside and the building opposite via a live feed to a flatscreen TV, but the producers have arranged for something else, too.
In a small, windowless side-room stand a pair of costumes. In one corner, hanging from a sturdy, metal frame, is the new-look Batsuit, all matte-black mesh and unyielding hard-plastic carapace, the first to actually allow the moody crime-fighter to actually turn his head. Impressive. But in the corner to its left, draped simply over a headless mannequin, is something far more exciting. It’s a tatty, threadbare get-up, a dark-green waistcoat over a grey shirt, with a dark-green tie at the collar. Purple trousers hang below and a long, angular purple coat sits on top. The ensemble’s completed by a pair of purple gloves and a silver fob chain dangling from the belt. It’s part Vivienne Westwood, part Alexander McQueen, part thrift-shop grunge. And it’s entirely The Joker.
Well, of course, not literally entirely. Later, Heath Ledger, the man who fills the suit onscreen, joins Empire – sadly sans his ravaged, psycho-clown make-up. Ledger's ill-at-ease body language and propensity to mumble suggest a nervousness you might expect from someone tackling such an iconic role. But everybody else Empire’s talked with that day, from Nolan himself to Michael Caine, who returns as Bruce Wayne's sardonic butler Alfred, describes Ledger as "fearless”.
"Oh, I definitely feared it," Ledger tells Empire quietly, with a half-apologetic smile. "Although anything that makes me afraid I guess excites me at the same time. I don't know if I was fearless, but I certainly had to put on a brave face and believe that I have something up my sleeve. Something different..."
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Christopher Nolan made it quite clear after he’d completed Batman Begins that he had no intention of making a sequel. But then, while shooting his next movie, The Prestige, something surprising happened: Nolan found himself replaying Batman Begins’ final dialogue exchange in his head, the moment when good copper Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) talks of a criminal with “a taste for theatrics” and hands Batman (Christian Bale) a playing card adorned with the smile-snarl face of a Joker. And Nolan found himself wanting to make a sequel, if only to see the Joker done his way.
“The way Batman Begins ended was intended not so much as sequel bait,” Nolan insists, “but to create a level of excitement at the end of the movie. Ultimately, the sequel happened because we got caught up in that process of imagining how you would see the Joker through the prism of what we did in the first film.”
And how is the Joker seen through that prism? "Indescribable, really. Not to sound evasive – it actually is quite difficult to explain, but all I can really say is Heath's not doing any particular thing, he's just inhabiting the character in very much the way I'd hoped from a psychological perspective. He really created something that I think is going to be quite terrifying."
He's just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown, and Chris has given me free rein. – Heath Ledger
Throughout Empire’s time noodling about on The Dark Knight’s set nobody seems confident enough to say precisely how The Joker will be portrayed in this film, A 'prologue' sequence revealing something of this mysterious villain's origin (various versions of which have been presented over the years in the comic book) will be screened ahead of I Am Legend on its US release this month, and is likely to appear in the UK, too, come the latter film's January release. Even so, Ledger himself quips that, "I feel like I'll be assassinated if I tell you something wrong," so when asked how much we'll see in the film of the man who becomes The Joker, he merely says that, "Most of the villains in the Chris Nolan style of Batman films are normal people or once were normal people."
Still, Ledger's more happy to discuss how he became The Joker – and we're not just talking about an hour in make-up. "It's a combination of reading all the comic books I could that were relevant to the script and then just closing my eyes and meditating on it. I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices – it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath – someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts. He's just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown, and Chris has given me free rein. Which is fun, because there are no real boundaries to what The Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke.
"I think we all have that in us," Ledger muses, before attempting to describe the physicality of inhabiting his and Nolan's vision of The Joker: "It's kind of like eating raw meat. What that does to your mouth and your eyes, simple little visual things like that. I don't know – I guess the rest is just trusting your research."
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There is a very specific reason , though, why Ledger – who's never even played a villain before – is considered a brave man to tackle this role. And, as with many things, nobody expresses that reason better than Michael Caine.
"If I put myself in a producer's shoes, I think: 'Wait a minute, we are making a movie about The Joker,” the 74 year-old actor ruminates. "Now, we have had Jack Nicholson, who is one of the greatest Jokers and one of the greatest characters in this kind of movie. I have worked with Jack and I know him really well. You do not really want to follow Jack into anything… Unless it's a nightclub."
Heath Ledger stunned me. You have never seen anything like it in your life. – Michael Caine
For his part, Nolan had no reservations about 'following' Jack (somewhere other than a nightclub). "None at all, to be honest," he says. "And that was very important to us in deciding to make this film. I certainly knew that story-wise the character was going to be very different, and it was always going to require a fearless performance from someone not afraid to put forward his own interpretation."
"Heath Ledger stunned me," continues Caine. "Jack played The Joker as sort of a benign nasty clown – like a wicked uncle. Heath plays him like an absolutely maniacal murderous psychopath. You have never seen anything like it in your life. He is very, very scary. I turn up every month or so and do a couple of bits, then go back to London. I had to do this bit where Batman and I watch a video which The Joker sends to threaten us. So I'd never seen him, and then he came on the television in the first rehearsal and I completely forgot my lines. I flipped, because it was so stunning, it was quite amazing. Wait until you see it, it’s incredible.”
READ MORE: The Prestige: Inside Christopher Nolan's Movie Magic Trick
READ MORE: Guy Pearce On His Memories Of Making Memento
READ MORE: Inception: Making Christopher Nolan's Psychological Action Epic
Fans of the comic book will realise that what we'll be seeing here is a version more of the original Joker – the pure, cold-hearted sociopath version – and the recent portrayals of him as a deeply insane man. Not the Crown Prince Of Crime, the rather more harmless prankster-bank-robber of the '60s, the Cesar Romero version if you like, which the Jack-Joker ran with for Burton's Batman.
Indeed, the ratty costume which Empire was introduced to right at the beginning of our day provides some key clues to the contrast between Ledger's Joker and Nicholson’s. “He’s certainly not a dapper, dandy gentleman in this film," says costume designer Lindy Hemming. “Whatever is wrong with him, it means he doesn't care about himself at all, really. We were trying to make him sort of a... I don't want to say vagrant, but his look in this film has a much punkier feel. Anarchic feel. Scruffier, grungier, and therefore when you see him move, he's slightly twitchier or edgy." He doesn't even have 'clown' make-up, as such. "He's just somebody who exaggerates the scar on his mouth," adds Hemming.
"What the director has done," says Caine, "which is so clever, is that the Joker has left the make-up and just let it rot off. It is never renewed. He's got a big, wide mouth and it gradually almost looks like bad skin disease."
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An antagonist is nothing without his protagonist, of course, and we should not forget that we wouldn't even have The Joker if it weren't for Batman. Still, with Nicholson stealing Burton's movie away from the frowning Michael Keaton, you could forgive Christian Bale for worrying that Ledger would do the same to him.
"I'm not worried at all," says Bale. "That was exactly the problem I had with all of the other movies – after I had read Frank Miller's Batman: Year One and various other graphic novels, I looked at those films and said, 'Well, how come it's always been that Batman's the most boring character?' I've never found him to be intriguing at all. Whereas these graphic novels depicted him as really being by far the most fascinating character. So I feel like we gained that back with Batman Begins. Now we've made him a character of substance, I have no problem with him competing with someone else. And that's going to make better entertainment and a better movie, which is great."
Bale grins. "I don't mind if everybody tries to chew up the scenery!"
Originally printed in Empire Magazine in January 2008