Great Character: The Joker (“The Dark Knight”)
I watched The Dark Knight [screenplay by Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, based on characters by Bob Kane) again recently, such a fantastic movie and in large part because of the Nemesis character — The Joker:
The movie’s plot summary via IMDB:
Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent are forced to deal with the chaos unleashed by an anarchist mastermind known only as the Joker, as he drives each of them to their limits.
Played brilliantly by the late Heath Ledger, the Joker is an agent of chaos, as he himself explains in one of the many memorable scenes featuring his character, here explaining his world view to Harvey Dent:
Then this moment where it appears that the character has a death wish:
Look at his words. Parse them carefully:
Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just… do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.
You can’t reason with him. Can’t outwit him. He doesn’t fear death. He seems to be able to think three or four steps ahead of everyone else. And he has such a truly distinctive take on reality. Oh yeah, then there are the scars. He explains them twice — each one a different story — then starts to tell Batman about them just before Batman throws the Joker off the skyscraper (only to save him), so we will never know the true story. But that just adds to the mystique of the character, a truly great one.