joker

We love the Joker.

We love him when he killed Jason Todd. We love him he pulled out that long ass revolver and shot down the Bat-plane in Batman. We love him when Mark Hamill voiced him in the Batman (and Justice League) cartoons. We didn’t really love the Heath Ledger Joker, but hey, everybody’s got their own opinion, right?

But we think we can all agree on one thing; the new Joker trailer is weird.

We really like Joaquin Phoenix’s take on the character (who looks like a cross between Caesar Romero’s and Jack Nicholson’s Jokers) and dig his acting.

But…Joker as a sympathetic villain? It’s been tried before in some of his origin stories, didn’t really work.

We’re not saying it won’t work this time, but we really think the character works better when he’s a pure villain, you know, instead of a tortured soul who goes nuts.

We mean take a look at the crap he’s put Batman through in the comics! He killed a Robin, tortured (and almost killed) Alfred, paralyzed Batgirl…and that’s just in the main DCU. We’re not even talking about the Batman Beyond or Elseworlds series or whatever else.

Put him in this softer light though…and we kind of think that it ruins the impact. Hopefully we’re proven wrong when the movie hits this October!

Hell, if it sucks, at least we still have the old Jokers.

Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.