The director explains the terrifying reality of Heath Ledger’ joker and addressed the Harley Quinn rumor
By Rickey Purdin
Even with the investigative skills of the Dark Knight Detective, it might be tough to track down Christopher Nolan these days.
The director hasn’t been in a fixed city—or even the same continent—for more than a few weeks at a time since filming began in April 2007 on “The Dark Knight,” the highly anticipated sequel to the $371 million-grossing “Batman Begins.” With that kind of high-dollar return, Warner Bros. pretty much opened the globe to Nolan and star Christian Bale for the follow-up. By filming everywhere from Chicago to London to Hong Kong, Nolan’s broadened the scope of the Bat-verse as he readies for a July 18 opening. And that wider vision includes a hyper-creepy take on Batman’s greatest rogue, the Joker—played by Heath Ledger—and backup baddie Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, the district attorney-turned-scarred killer Two-Face.
Nolan finally stayed put long enough to give away his filming location in England—by the time you read this he’ll have moved again, this time to the editing bay—and chat about the new villains, the appearance of Harley Quinn and why he might not return for a third Bat-movie!
WIZARD: Obviously, fans can’t wait to see the Joker onscreen, but why add Two-Face as a major villain in “Dark Knight”? Are you worried it may take the edge off Joker a bit?
NOLAN: Certainly there’s always a danger in a sequel by introducing more characters. You can wind up with a very large story. But at a certain point, you start to think that that’s partly the purpose of a sequel—to expand the story that you started telling and carry it on. It expands, too, for all of the characters. You’re doing it in all different directions, and so I think you quite naturally end up with quite a larger story. It’s going to be a tricky balance keeping everything in proportion, but the challenge is what it’s all about.
What challenge do you think the Joker poses for Batman as a character?
NOLAN: The Joker, in his own way, is as much an icon as the Dark Knight is and that presents us with just a tremendously exciting opportunity in terms of how we carry on our story and continue to explore the point of view of the character because, as I said, he is as almost as much an icon as Batman himself. It’s a pretty terrifying spectacle, and he’s a really fascinating character.
When casting a “terrifying spectacle” of a character like the Joker, why choose Heath Ledger?
NOLAN: I was looking for someone who was fearless. knew that I needed a fantastic actor, but I also knew that I needed someone who wasn’t going to worry about comparisons to any other actors who had played the role. I met with Heath before we even actually had a script. We talked about ideas for who the character would be in this movie as opposed to his previous appearances in movies, and we both saw it in the same way. He’s just an incredible, incredible actor, and if you see “Brokeback Mountain,” it’s an amazing performance from a young actor. It’s just this sort of youthful energy that he has and the kind of intensity that he brings to this process has been pretty extraordinary to watch.
How early on did you start to think that you wanted Heath for the role?
NOLAN: I think that it was before we even had a finished draft of the script. I had actually met with Heath a couple of times over the years for different projects, but nothing that seemed to work for us. Then this came up, and he heard that I was going to be doing the character in the next movie. He asked about it and we got together.
Initially, the announcement of Heath as the Joker seemed to polarize fans. Were you worried at all about that reaction?
NOLAN: Oh, not particularly. Jack Nicholson did a very definitive portrayal of a type of Joker; a version of the Joker in the [Tim] Burton film that has lasted as an icon. We were always going to come up against that so I didn’t particularly worry about it. Also, Heath is one of those actors who, in his best work, completely transforms himself and that sort of consumes his star quality. He’s creating something that’s entirely original for himself and so he’s never done anything like this before. I can’t say that I was hugely surprised or worried about the reaction because whoever we would’ve cast, it’s going to be tough for people to know how the palette is going to work. Particularly with Heath, who’s dredging something up from a side of himself that you’ve never seen before.
You portray Batman as a feasible character in your films. In that sense, in a practical Batman world, how is the Joker going to operate?
NOLAN: We worked on a particular tone to the way we were capturing Batman, Gordon [and] all the people that appeared in the film. So then it’s about how you view the icon of the Joker. How do you put him into that world? For me, he immediately becomes a more realistic character. He becomes more, I guess, “realistic” is the word I come back to. We want to create a villain who, as colorful and eccentric as he is, it’s still coming from a place of psychological reality. It’s coming from a recognizable, everyday reality. So the notion of the Joker as the most extreme form of anarchist, the most frightening form of anarchic, chaotic presence in Gotham, that’s very much the starting point for the character and very much what the character has become.
Is that where the scarred look of the Joker comes from? It’s more along the lines of the practical aspect of the movie.
NOLAN: Yeah! Things have to fit in tonally with the other elements of our world. I know that there are certain elements from the comics that don’t fit and some that do. The advantage that we had in writing the script for this film is we just have this great body of work from 65 years of all these different talented writers and artists who’ve tried different interpretations and different ways of looking at these characters.
Heath sounds terrifying when he speaks in the trailer; was that what you expected?
NOLAN: It’s nothing like we expected at all, which is just fantastic. It’s very hard to describe and very hard to pin down. He’s just got an incredible range to the voice and the way in which he uses it. It goes from being quite high-pitched and eccentric to having these sort of moments of extraordinary anger and power where you just feel this guy’s anger at things. He’s very charismatic, but really quite frightening.
Do we get to see the origins of that frightening character in the film?
NOLAN: Without giving too much away, the way that I can describe it is that we don’t show the origin of the Joker, we show the rise of the Joker. It’s slightly a different thing. The whole movie is founded quite strongly on the basis [of an idea] at the end of “Batman Begins” when Ra’s Al Ghul talks about escalation. He talks about the increasingly bizarre and criminal reaction to Batman and the extremity of what Bruce Wayne is doing as Batman.
I’ve heard you say you and the writing team went back to the Joker’s first appearances to capture that essence of the character in the new film. What about that version of the Joker did you like?
NOLAN: It’s really a bit of everything. Funnily enough, we didn’t go back to the origins consciously. I’d probably looked at them years before we were working up the story, and what we found was that we had a lot of very similar elements. There is a murderous quality to him. He’s a criminal, but he has this great delight in his murderous nature and there’s the great siege of a massively destructive, anarchic force in the way that guy looks at the world which is quite amazing, I think. He’s very much the absolute. That’s what we’ve presented in the film. He is an absolute.
Word is we see the Joker’s sidekick and girlfriend Harley Quinn make an appearance in the film. Or is that just all a rumor?
NOLAN: It’s all a rumor, yeah. [Laughs]
Now, how has Bruce Wayne and Batman evolved since “Batman Begins,” and what’s changed about Christian Bale’s actual portrayal of the character?
NOLAN: The basic difference obviously is that he’s now a more fully formed character. We tried to get there by the end of “Batman Begins.” Now we just jump into it with Batman as a more fully formed Batman. So the story moves on from Bruce Wayne and the death of his parents and the tragedy that happened to him as a child. This is much more about how he and his actions are influencing the world around him, how Gotham is changing because of Batman and how Batman is responding to that.
Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes in the sequel. What makes Maggie so perfect for the role?
NOLAN: I’ve always loved Maggie’s work. I’ve always looked for an opportunity to cast her in something, and when Katie dropped out it seemed like a perfect match because we needed a character for our story. I think Maggie brings a lot of very attractive qualities to the character and has a great maturity. You really believe her in this role.
As a teaser, can you tell us who the first and last characters to speak in the film are?
NOLAN: I’m trying to think if I can answer that…to be honest, the first person to speak is an unnamed character and the last person to speak…I don’t think I should say. I’ll be honest. I hope that doesn’t screw you completely.
Fair enough. In terms of existing teasers, though, you guys have been great about doing viral marketing on the Internet. Why haven’t there been more traditional trailers?
NOLAN: I’m never comfortable with people seeing things until they’re really ready. I don’t like showing footage, whether it’s the studio, whether it’s to fans, whether it’s to family members. I don’t really like showing people things until I know they’ve been worked on and finished.
Speaking of “finishing,” is this film the last for you on the Batman franchise? It’s been a big part of your life for the last half decade.
NOLAN: [Laughs] That’s right! It’s really tough for me to ever talk about future projects. Films particularly of this scale are such mammoth propositions. I never thought that I would do a second “Batman” film. Let me put it that way. I had no thought of doing a second one when I was doing the first one, but obviously you never say, “Never.” Every film I’m working on, however, to me is generally the last film I’m ever going to make. That’s my approach to making film. It’s one of the reasons actually that I’m not comfortable putting footage out or early trailers because I’m engaged in making one thing at a time. I’m very single-minded and very focused on the task at hand and I do focus on just this movie. I really don’t have anything in my head about what’s next or doing another one or whatever.
So it’s not just you being evasive? You’re not trying to say nothing?
NOLAN: Yeah. It’s a tricky thing. I’m always terribly evasive when I’m talking about [Heath] and it’s not that really. It’s just actually very difficult to describe really, that this youthful, energetic, anarchic portrayal is quite frightening. It’s complicated. I think it’s getting out there slowly and people are getting the idea of it, which is fun. It’s as exciting for me because I’m watching it play itself out. But until we actually put it all together, sit there and watch it with my editor, I’m incredibly excited about doing that and I think it’s going to have quite an effect.
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Batman : The Dark Knight - Release Date:18 July 2008 (USA) Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the city streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as The Joker.(IMDb)
