There’s no doubt about it, Batmania has swept the world. I’ll admit the new Batman movie is good, not 9.5 on imdb good, but good nonetheless.
However, it doesn’t take the world’s greatest detective to realize The Dark Knight killed the Joker.
Instead of the Joker we get John Wayne Gacy with henchmen. Where’s the acid-spewing flower, the electrocuting joy buzzer, the prank gun that shoots out a flag… WHERE’S THE JOKES? Joker without the jokes is like Penguin without the birds or Riddler without the riddles.
The real travesty here isn’t the lack of gimmicks, it’s the lack of style. Above all the Joker is a showman, or at least he’s supposed to be. But instead of a spry, whimsical, criminal-artiste, we get a lip-smacking, slouching, “mad dog.”
And as for the so-called darkness of this Joker-wannabe, read the comics. Joker has mutilated people, murdered kid sidekicks, he’s even pushed a poor defenseless monkey off a cliff… OK it was Gorilla Grodd but you get the idea. The scariest thing about the Joker is that his outrageousness belies his deadliness. A great example is the new Joker’s Asylum: Joker comic, in which the Joker takes over a quiz show and tells the contestants he’ll kill them if they get the answers wrong, but he doesn’t. It’s that unpredictablity that makes the Joker scary.
“Why so serious?” That’s what I’d like to know.
