Although director Matt Reeves’ The Batman will arrive in March 2022 with confirmed villains the Penguin and the Riddler, theories that the Joker will somehow play a role are inescapable. It makes sense that fans would expect a Joker, because he's been the Batman foe virtually since the 1940 comic-book debut of the Clown Prince of Crime. It undoubtedly would be interesting to see the Joker woven into noir-inspired world of The Batman, and a new iteration would add to the heated debate over who best played the Joker in live-action.
Until then, however, most Batman fans would name Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix as the premier live-action Jokers. Getting fans to agree on a winner between those two, though, isn’t an easy task.
The Dark Knight Is More Critically Acclaimed Than Joker
While director Todd Phillips' Joker was a huge financial success, the 2019 psychological thriller left critics somewhat divided. Metacritic’s average rating places the film at only a 59, with an audience score of 9. The film’s Rotten Tomatoes scores are similar, garnering 68 percent among critics, and 88 percent with fans. The Dark Knight’s ratings, on the other hand, were substantially higher. Its Metacritic score is 84, with the audience giving it a 9. However, on Rotten Tomatoes, it boasts a 94 percent among critics and fans alike.
Naturally, fan scores are higher than critics’ scores, so it makes sense that Joker enjoyed such a profitable box-office run. That notwithstanding, The Dark Knight is heavily preferred by both fans and critics. Of course, those scores reflect the films as a whole, not a specific actor's performance; however, The Dark Knight's high reviews definitely have a lot to do with Heath Ledger's performance.
Heath Ledger’s Joker Is Very Comic Book-Accurate
Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix both play grade-A villains, and there are a lot of similarities between them, staring with the fact that they both received numerous awards for their performances. Both of their Jokers are more grounded in reality than their comic book counterpart, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because they reflect what a real-world supervillain might look like. Similarly, their behavior remains in line with the classic Joker. However, there is also a significant difference between the two, and it has something to do with the genres of their respective movies.
To state the obvious, The Dark Knight is a superhero film. Thus, Ledger’s Joker had to be the worst-of-the worst to paint Batman in a positive light; that’s in-line with the Joker’s comic origins. Of course, the Clown Prince of Crime has changed a lot over the years, but before his days as a practical joker in the 1960s, he was a criminal mastermind, and the antithesis of Batman’s heroics. To do something like that, the Joker has to be just as important to a Batman film as its hero, and Ledger is exactly that by commanding every scene in which he appears. The best part is that he does so by being a total contradiction: He’s an utter madman, yet he's also a conniving mastermind.
Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker Doesn’t Live Up to the Character’s Mystique
To be sure, Joaquin Phoenix commands the screen, but the material he was working with is completely different from Ledger’s. Even though it's an origin story, Joker can easily be seen as a tragedy. He’s not the murderous terrorist that Ledger portrays; rather, Arthur Fleck suffers from a mental disorder. Thus, as he goes on his chaos-causing rampage at the end of the film, it leaves fans wondering what might been done to prevent his actions.
That’s a total contradiction from the irredeemable character who, to paraphrase Alfred Pennyworth, just wants to watch the world burn. In other words, Phoenix’s portrayal humanizes the Joker but also harms his comic book mystique as a ruthless, criminal mastermind, thus, leaving Heath Ledger as the ultimate Joker.