Jared Leto IS The Joker - Part 1

[Travesty]

No offense.

 

[chamber-music]

Jokers skating years
[YT]/TPQDvTMesmQ[/YT]

 

[Astro13Zombie]

That was the worst commercial I've ever seen.

 

[chamber-music]

It is so 90's it hurts

 

[harryoscop]

Yeah, that Joker looked too much like Heath's Joker.

 

[Rodrigo90]

Thinking again of Joker's personality...

I don’t exactly have a clear idea of what I personally want. I always usually accept and respect what I'm given. So, I always live in the hope and imaginative ideas

I've recently taken more of an interest in Jared and his work, not just as an actor or musician (he's phenomenal as both), but what he's like as a person.
Growing up, he was brought up in the hippe movement. So, to him, he has learned to be around and respect the most unique and unusual forms of people, whether it be their work or personality. He was also brought up around a lot of theatre work.

So, I'm hoping, and perhaps it'll be true, that he'll bring out the Joker's zany and showman side out in force. Joker, is quite literally, in the way I've always imagined every single one of his antics, is that he is the Devil's clown. Without it being said, without it actually being the case - the Joker is Satan's comedian, at least in my eyes. He's a guy who will go out his way, to be seen by God himself, just to make a joke and stick his middle finger up at the sky and laugh at it.
Joker is not only mad, he's angry with something or someone. Maddeningly angry.
For whatever reason, his anger and hatred lead to his madness and this madness lead to his evilness.
He has to be a force that takes it to the absolute extreme and it needs to be known.
All this cruelty has to come from something so deep in his soul.
Like the latge movements of the world, like Jared himself was exposed to, Joker has to have this burning intensity to his character, that makes him a force to be reckoned with.
You don't say he's this and that. You say
Joker IS anger. Joker IS hatred. Joker IS madness. Joker IS evil.
And he'll let everyone on Heaven, Earth and Hell know it.
He needs to be as passionate about his mission, just as much as Batman is about his. All the while, having as much fun as he can out of it.

Jared being the method actor, I think, or at least hope, will discover things like that.

 

[Llama_Shepherd]

Jared should be given the list of things that make Joker laugh from The Clown At Midnight:

"Blind babies. Landmines. AIDS. Beloved pets in roads accidents. Statistics. Pencilcases. BRUNCH! The Periodic Table of the Elements. Geniuses suffering irreversible brain damage. REAL bad news. Shattered faith. Sombreros. Politics. Fish being gutted. Fish being gutted. Fish being gutted. Bowel cancer. Fish being gutted. Mister Ed. Guns in schools. Cripples. Racism. Alzheimer's. Batman."

 

[Rodrigo90]

Damn straight my boy!

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Hmm... You know, I too have often thought that underneath it all what fuels the Joker is an Ahab like anger at God/The Universe itself, despite all the artifice of being beyond it all that he puts up. He truly hates the chaos and seeming pointlessness of existence as he sees it, and the "humor" is an air he puts on. Like Batman, he suffered some deep emotional trauma that scarred him at his core, but unlike Batman he actually just let the darkness and anger consume him whole. He figures, "If I am a miserable bastard, then everyone is going to be a miserable bastard too, and I'm going to make sure of that. I have to shatter the whole facade of humanity and order."

 

[Rodrigo90]

I wouldn't let the smile or the fun attitude fool me

The Joker does have an intense - probably the most intense hatred of humanity and existence in comicbook literature.
It's like a maddening hatred. Where you're that much burning with anger, you giggle with glee and roar with madness, at the thought of hurting people. Almost like exacting Vengeance upon everyone and everything.

And I think that would be rooted in his idea of life kicking him down too many times in one day.

 

[Sawyer]

[YT]AHVolZurCPs[/YT]

 

[ThePowerCosmic]

I really enjoyed reading your perspective of the Joker, Rodrigo. Fantastic.

 

[Astro13Zombie]

[YT]AHVolZurCPs[/YT]

I know it's basically a sin to name anybody but Mark Hamill as your favorite joker voice,but John Dimaggio is the best IMO
What he did in UTRH wasn't all that unique when it comes to his voice work,but it just worked really well for me.
"Tell the big man I said..hello"
t:

Michael Emerson was also great.
Creepy as hell and I loved it.

 

[antsman41]

Jared should be given the list of things that make Joker laugh from The Clown At Midnight:

"Blind babies. Landmines. AIDS. Beloved pets in roads accidents. Statistics. Pencilcases. BRUNCH! The Periodic Table of the Elements. Geniuses suffering irreversible brain damage. REAL bad news. Shattered faith. Sombreros. Politics. Fish being gutted. Fish being gutted. Fish being gutted. Bowel cancer. Fish being gutted. Mister Ed. Guns in schools. Cripples. Racism. Alzheimer's. Batman."

Ledger wrote about stuff like that in his 'Joker Journal'.

 

[The Joker]

Ledger wrote about stuff like that in his 'Joker Journal'.

Yep. Grant Morrison picked up on that, too;

Heath Ledger’s Joker -- no question it was an amazing performance. And if he were still with us, we could ask him about his various inspirations: what did he watch, what did he read, what did he observe, how did he inhabit his character? Well, one of the clues he left us was his Joker diary, which he kept four months before shooting.

In it, there’s a list of what would make the Joker laugh – including AIDS, landmines, geniuses suffering irreversible brain damage, brunch, and sombreros. “It gave me this chill,” Grant Morrison said, because it was word-for-word what Morrison had written in one of his Batman stories.

“There’s a Batman [Batman #663, “The Clown at Midnight”] that I did last year that hardly anyone read,” Morrison said.

As a response to his own "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth,” Morrison had continued his themes of the duality of Joker and the Batman in “The Clown at Midnight.” Having established with “Arkham” that the Joker had a sort of “super-sanity” and that he shifted between personalities,” Morrison explored the idea further in “The Clown at Midnight,” by showing that each time the Joker escaped, one of those new personalities would emerge.

“It’s a really good story,” Morrison said, “but because it was prose, people didn’t want to read it.”

Except, apparently, Heath, who saw Morrison’s list and put it in his Joker diary. “He actually had a whole list -- blind babies, doctors, accidents -- really horrible stuff,” Morrison said. “Heath wrote it all down. So yeah, I can see there’s a lot of [‘Arkham’ and ‘Midnight’] in his Joker.”

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2008/08/0...-morrison-opens-up-heath-ledgers-joker-diary/

 

[KillerWolf]

I really like Morrison's idea that Joker has a higher state of mind. Basically, Joker somehow achieved the Samadhi and his consciousness regularly transcends the oneself. It goes in line with the nihilism that is often portrayed to be one of the Joker's traits, as for someone in that state of mind, it comes as natural extension. Though, from the rest of the world, he's viewed as someone who's completely insane, he actually possesses this "super-sanity" that makes him completely detached from the world and able to view it quite differently.

I suppose that Morrison's devotion to Ordo Templi Orientis proved to be mostly valuable when writing Joker, though he utilized some of the knowledge when writing Batman too, like with him practicing Thogal in "Black Glove" arc.

It's interesting that two of my favorite comic book artists belong to the same order. Alan Moore is also associated with the O.T.O.

 

[Rocketman]

The Joker, to me, is the following.

He's sort of the opposite of Ledger's Joker, in the sense that Ledger's character was sloppy, ragged, long-haired, kind of thrown together, greasy, not-showered-in-three-days, with a nerdy voice, and a feeling that he was the outcast from high school who turned into a freak and went postal. He's clearly a man, a human being, a drug addict with potential depression issues resulting in self-mutilation and scars. That's not The Joker to me.

My Joker spends a crazy amount of time making sure he looks perfect. He is a showman. He is an entertainer. He's the announcer at the Vaudeville Show from Hell. He wants to be seen. He needs an audience. He's got a professional voice that a radio DJ would envy. He's a class act. He looks like a distinguished gentleman on TV if someone played with the contrast and color buttons which resulted in a peach-colored man in a black-and-white suit to suddenly turn Purple/Green/Red/White, etc. He looks like Bruce Wayne at a charity ball as seen through Psychedelic LSD glasses. His hair is short and combed. He has no scars on his face. He's not a man or a woman, he's not interested in sex or is turned on sexually by anything, but at the same time, he's a metrosexual. He's not human. He has no birth, or death, he has no age, and he doesn't age. He's just here.

Most importantly, beyond being human, he is a clown. A real clown, no white make-up. He's his own race. A clown is a species, and he is the only representative on Earth of his species. He's from Clown World where age and sex and morality don't apply. He's not even crazy. That implies that something's wrong with him. There's nothing wrong with him. He's perfectly normal where he comes from, and he's convinced of that. He came to Earth and looked around at society, and is completely tickled by how absurd it is, how humorless, how uneventful, how boring. Back on his home planet, it's a giant circus where clowns commit suicide and blow up schools and swallow fire, and that's his idea of a good ol' fashioned Leave-it-to-Beaver kind of world. Everyone else on Earth is nuts.

To me, Jared Leto embodies all of that.

 

[Keehar]

The Joker, to me, is the following.

He's sort of the opposite of Ledger's Joker, in the sense that Ledger's character was sloppy, ragged, long-haired, kind of thrown together, greasy, not-showered-in-three-days, with a nerdy voice, and a feeling that he was the outcast from high school who turned into a freak and went postal. He's clearly a man, a human being, a drug addict with potential depression issues resulting in self-mutilation and scars. That's not The Joker to me.

Nope. Ledger's Joker was not ragged and thrown together. He wore a proper purple suit, green vest, gloves, and he even rubbed it in the mob's face that the suit was not cheap because he bought it with the money he stole from them.

His voice was creepy, not nerdy. Nerds don't sound like that. He never acted depressed, or potentially like he could suffer from it. Even though Joker of the comics has had depressive spells where he feels he's lost his mojo.

Joker being an outcast freak is the perfect depiction of him. That's what he is.

My Joker spends a crazy amount of time making sure he looks perfect. He is a showman. He is an entertainer. He's the announcer at the Vaudeville Show from Hell. He wants to be seen. He needs an audience. He's got a professional voice that a radio DJ would envy. He's a class act. He looks like a distinguished gentleman on TV if someone played with the contrast and color buttons which resulted in a peach-colored man in a black-and-white suit to suddenly turn Purple/Green/Red/White, etc. He looks like Bruce Wayne at a charity ball as seen through Psychedelic LSD glasses. His hair is short and combed. He has no scars on his face. He's not a man or a woman, he's not interested in sex or is turned on sexually by anything, but at the same time, he's a metrosexual. He's not human. He has no birth, or death, he has no age, and he doesn't age. He's just here.

Ledger's Joker was all of those things. He needed an audience that's why he always did his announcements on TV. And he made a twisted show out of them. Like how he terrorized the copycat Batman, and hung the famous Gotham newscaster upside down with a funny breaking news sign behind him and a clown smile on his face, and made him read his script lol. He was not interested in sex (Nicholson's Joker failed big time on that one), and he was not human in the sense that he had no age, no identity, no history. He was only the Joker. Another thing Nicholson's Joker failed big time on.

Most importantly, beyond being human, he is a clown. A real clown, no white make-up. He's his own race. A clown is a species, and he is the only representative on Earth of his species. He's from Clown World where age and sex and morality don't apply. He's not even crazy. That implies that something's wrong with him. There's nothing wrong with him. He's perfectly normal where he comes from, and he's convinced of that. He came to Earth and looked around at society, and is completely tickled by how absurd it is, how humorless, how uneventful, how boring. Back on his home planet, it's a giant circus where clowns commit suicide and blow up schools and swallow fire, and that's his idea of a good ol' fashioned Leave-it-to-Beaver kind of world. Everyone else on Earth is nuts.

There is no such thing as a 'real' clown. A clown is someone who wears make up. So in that sense Ledger's Joker was a real clown. Ledger's Joker did not think he was crazy. He didn't even think he was a monster, he just thought he was ahead of everyone else and he had to show them the bad joke of life.

This is why he was the biz. He was everything Joker should be.

To me, Jared Leto embodies all of that.

Did you go in a time machine and see Leto's Joker?

 

[Rocketman]

Nope. Ledger's Joker was not ragged and thrown together. He wore a proper purple suit, green vest, gloves, and he even rubbed it in the mob's face that the suit was not cheap because he bought it with the money he stole from them.

His voice was creepy, not nerdy. Nerds don't sound like that. He never acted depressed, or potentially like he could suffer from it. Even though Joker of the comics has had depressive spells where he feels he's lost his mojo.

Joker being an outcast freak is the perfect depiction of him. That's what he is.



Ledger's Joker was all of those things. He needed an audience that's why he always did his announcements on TV. And he made a twisted show out of them. Like how he terrorized the copycat Batman, and hung the famous Gotham newscaster upside down with a funny breaking news sign behind him and a clown smile on his face, and made him read his script lol. He was not interested in sex (Nicholson's Joker failed big time on that one), and he was not human in the sense that he had no age, no identity, no history. He was only the Joker. Another thing Nicholson's Joker failed big time on.



There is no such thing as a 'real' clown. A clown is someone who wears make up. So in that sense Ledger's Joker was a real clown. Ledger's Joker did not think he was crazy. He didn't even think he was a monster, he just thought he was ahead of everyone else and he had to show them the bad joke of life.

This is why he was the biz. He was everything Joker should be.



Did you go in a time machine and see Leto's Joker?

lol

 

[regwec]

Keehar's post is so impervious to allusion, metaphor or imagination that it is an almost exemplary work of philistine refutation.

 

[Keehar]

Sticks and stones. My post uses fact from an existing movie character. I am not making claims about an unforeseen performance. We haven't even seen a pic of Leto in costume yet to judge what style he'll have.

So word carefully who's post you call philistine refutation.

 

[regwec]

Er...yours. Movies of the future have no bearing on your small mindedness in response to Rocketman's thoughtful articulation of his own perception of a fictional character.

 

[Keehar]

The whole point of his thoughtful articulation as you call it was to tell us that Jared Leto in an unforeseen role embodied all of that. How can anyone make a claim like that about Leto when they know nothing about Leto in this role yet? Not how he will play it, or what he'll even look like. Tell me how does that come off as a passable post to you? Let me guess because it took a cheap shot at Ledger's Joker because he's the only Joker performance that's a threat to Leto's in the popularity stakes right?

 

[regwec]

His post made an analogy with Jared Leto, not with a prediction of The Joker he would play. Try to be a bit less reactionary and defensive, and more attentive to what is actually being written.

 

[Rocketman]

I'll accept defeat here, actually. Keehar wins. I forgot that this isn't a place for personal opinions or tastes.