Best Joker

[Lycaon]

I'd be with you all the way there, except for one thing - Return of the Joker. Hamill and the writing team took the character to scary (albeit slightly limited by the intended audience) places that even Nolan didn't go. Ledger's Joker may have killed a bunch of innocent people but even he didn't

kidnap, torture, drug, surgically enhance, and brainwash a young child into believing he was his son.

 

 

Return of the Joker also boasts the best

final last words for the character. Anytime the Joker dies in any medium, he should never be given any other last line than this: "That's...not...funny..."

 

 

To me, Ledger is the best real world Joker. I could just about see a psychopath like him existing in the real world, or at least the slightly enhanced world of Nolan's Batman. But when it comes to a moving, walking, talking interpretation of the more flamboyant, vaudevillian character that is depicted in the comics, I turn to Return of the Joker and Mark Hamill.

 

 

If you really want to skip ahead to the best Joker, don't worry about finding the animated series episodes, go straight for the animated movies: Batman - Mask of the Phantasm and Batman Beyond - Return of the Joker. Until Dark Knight came along, I swear to god these were the best feature-length Batman movies ever made and they both showcase a great Joker as well.

Agreed.

[bishopcruz]

I'd also recommend the animated series episode Mad Love as it is another amazing Joker episode. The Laughing Fish is great too.

 

As for my favorite, right now I'd say Ledger, though Hamill is amazing and probably my image of the true Joker. However I don't think that that version would work in live action.

[Maldron]

Mad Love is a fucking classic that deserves any and all respect that comes to it.

[Reverend Jax]

Yeah I'm with Benny, Jack Nicholson is wonderful at playing every character except the one he's supposed to be playing, which is why now all he's doing are crazy old man parts.

To be fair, he was not just a crazy old man in The Departed, but generally speaking, you are dead-on.

 

Also, I agree with the point on Return of the Joker. Mask of the Phantasm was an excellent movie, but it wasn't really shining example for the Joker, it was a shining moment for Bruce/Batman. There were many episodes from the animated series that were better Joker moments for Hamill than Phantasm. At least that what my memory tells me. I might rewatch it soon.

[Silent Bob]

You're right, it was certainly more of a Batman story and Joker was a secondary character who showed up halfway through, but I think it did a great job of boiling the character down to his essentials. It doesn't shed any insight into his origin or his thought process or his motivations but it's one of the best-told examples of what he does and how he acts. Also, the PG rating and the feature length allowed Timm and company to give him just a little more menace than he could have in the series.

 

But there are absolutely plenty more great Joker stories in the show (Mad Love and The Laughing Fish included). It'd just be easier to watch Phantasm than go through four years of the show again.