3. Jack Nicholson – Batman (1989)
I was 11 years old when Batman came out and, I’ll admit, I hated Jack Nicholson’s performance back then. It just didn’t feel like the Joker to me, an opinion that solidified as I watched more Jack Nicholson films and just assumed he played the same character in every part.
I was a very dumb kid, is what I’m saying. Nicholson was the first actor to play the Joker with no real precedent outside of the comics, as the TV and cartoon versions were just generic baddies. Everyone else would be riffing on the version that preceded them, which makes Nicholson’s idea of Joker as performance artist even more impressive.
The Batman script by Sam Hamm by Warren Skaaren saddles the leads with standard ’80s action movie tropes, and director Tim Burton famously didn’t care about the character motivations (“I have no idea” Burton answered when Nicholson asked him why the Joker went up a tower at the movie’s end). Yet Nicholson makes his Joker feel like a comic book character come to life, a murderous artist who sees the world as a giant prank without ever having to articulate his worldview. All the world’s a stage, and Nicholson’s Joker is going to play to the cheap seats while knocking them dead. Literally.
Although Joel Schumacher wanted Nicholson to return as the Joker in a dream sequence for the shelved Batman Unchained, it’s better that he only had one outing. Nicholson’s Joker is one of a kind, unique in the annals of the character and in the actor’s filmography, no matter what young, dumb me thought.
2. Mark Hamill – Batman: The Animated Series
How great is Mark Hamill‘s take on the Joker? It’s so great that Joker, not the main character in a genre-defining blockbuster, is Hamill’s signature role. Where every other person to play the Joker has a particular interpretation—sadist or prankster or showman or monster, etc.—Hamill plays multiple notes, often at once. When he drops into a low growl, the Joker conveys genuine menace. Yet when he tosses off a corny one-liner and bows for an audience, Hamill makes the different tones all feel consistent.
Hamill, of course, wasn’t the first pick to voice Joker in Batman: The Animated Series. Tim Curry got the role first and voiced several episodes before Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett replaced him with Hamill, for reasons that have never been made clear. Whatever went into the decision, there’s no question that it was the right one. Thanks to his ability to adjust his voice to a variety of tones, Hamill’s Joker truly feels like he exists in his own world. There’s the grotesque nuclear family he establishes in Mask of the Phantasm (“Meatloaf again? Awww, I had it for lunch!”), the jolly holiday host in “Christmas With the Joker,” the suave businessman in “The Laughing Fish.” One almost gets the sense that he’s trying to be a regular person, but it always gets refracted into something upsetting and strange.