Joker's origins NOT told in THE DARK KNIGHT

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

In comic book lore, it took DC Comics 11 years to print a back-story and origin for their most popular villain The Joker, as printed in Detective Comics No. 168. For over a decade he terrified and thrilled children as a white clown faced, purple suit wearing mass murdering psychopath who seemingly had no rhyme, reason or method to his madness.

Of course in comic book films, it hasn't really worked that way with The Joker or any other major hero or villain. In Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie we started the flick from the point of view of Jack Napier and we witnessed a full character change from evil gangster to homicidal joker. Indeed, we learnt a far lot more about him than we did our masked hero. One thing I believe many comic book films have missed out on in the past is the power of mystery and sometimes writers need to tell us EVERYTHING about a character, shows me that they don't have as much faith as they should in their storytelling. With some characters it's surely better to NOT know their origins, especially at first, as it makes them a far more creepy and terrifying prospect when an evil presence just shows up, un-human like. I refer to Darth Vader and his incredible power in the first Star Wars movie but then we we see him as a kid in the prequels - and the character's evil presence is stripped away completely. We don't need to see that The Joker was a human being. Infact I rather wouldn't. And thankfully The Dark Knight producer Charles Roven has updated us on a few things today, the main one being the movie is not "The Joker Begins..."

- The IMAX preview with I Am Legend is the first five minutes of the film. - "The whole thing is not 'Joker Begins', because we did not tell how the Joker became what he is," says Nolan. "During these five minutes it is shown how the the small crook becomes the most-dreaded gangster of the city - it is more like "The Rise of the Joker." - Batman's new mask will have white lenses on the eyes when he turns on the Bat-sonar detection. - Batman will go to Hong Kong for some kind of "gangster hunting", but Roven doesn't say why Batman travels to Hong Kong.

Good or bad news for you? Did you want to see The Joker's full origin or do you just think some things are more powerful when we just don't know why? source - coming soon, kino.de