Batman Movie Villains: 7 Perfect Performances & 7 That Sucked
Where does Joaquin Phoenix's Joker rank?
It takes a lot to be a great Batman villain. The Caped Crusader has one of the biggest Rogues Galleries in the history of comic book characters, but such is his longevity that he's faced off with some who are far from the top drawer. It's inevitable.
On the film side of things, it's all been a lot more tight. With Joaquin Phoenix's Joker, there will have been FIVE live action movie takes on the character and we've had multiple Catwomans, Banes, Penguins... They and the real core of Batman's baddies are the ones who tend to crop up when it comes to deciding who he faces on screen next.
But even with a tighter roster, it hasn't all been great. In fact, some of the biggest crimes against Batman movies - ironically - have been committed by his villains. Just as some of the best moments were captured by them too.
So which ones were the best and which were the worst?
First, the main offenders...
7 Batman Movie Villain Performances That Sucked
7. Jared Leto - The Joker (Suicide Squad)
It would be pretty fair to say that people didn't exactly fall over themselves to love Jared Leto's Joker. Faced with the almost impossible task of emulating Heath Ledger's impact - or at the very least offering a performance of note alongside it - he went full method, took the oddest inspiration points and made an... uneven fist of it, let's say.
His Joker ended up being a Jugalo pimp with a grill, lots of Easter Eggs tattooed on him and a hell of a wardrobe, but his performance lacked restraint. On the back of talk of his on-set antics and combined with the studio's decision to cut out a huge chunk of his material, he ended up having no real substance.
He's a circus act and not in the good way.