8. Michael Pitt
When you think of sadistic characters toying with the lives of their victims, one of the first to come to mind might well be The Joker in The Killing Joke, crippling Barbara Gordon and forcing her father, Commissioner Jim, to view photos of the carnage. Another figure on the list would have to be Paul in Michael Haneke's Funny Games - either the original Austrian film or the shot-for-shot American remake - who, along with his partner, torments and murders a family of three for no reason at all. A satire on violence in the media played straight, the smirking Paul knows he's in a film - frequently addressing the audience and, at one point, using a TV remote to rewind time and save his compatriot's life - and it's this that allows him to prevail over the conventions of the home invasion genre: none of his victims, likeable or otherwise, makes it out alive. While not quite as self-aware as, say, Deadpool, The Joker definitely has a sense of his place in the universe, an agent of chaos to Batman's order, the yin to his yang, etc. Michael Pitt - the actor who played Paul in Haneke's remake of his own film - has the wan complexion, the slicked-back hair and the shark eyes you might expect from a psychotic mobster, and, indeed, his main role up to this point has been as damaged hoodlum Jimmy Darmody in HBO's Boardwalk Empire (and again as an unknown and unfortunate tough in the
opening scene of Seven Psychopaths). Though he may come across as somewhat lacking in gorm in the above clip (Jimmy Darmody, too, is/was ambitious but somewhat inept), but combining that sense of detachment with the sense of youthful glee he displayed back in his Dawson's Creek days or in Bertolucci's The Dreamers, it might be possible to capture a more vulnerable take on the Ace of Knaves. Nobody wants The Joker t0 have a bleeding heart - unless he's removed it from an unfortunate Gothamite - but that's not to say he couldn't have a little more humanity. While it's unlikely they'll be able to cram it into a film that already features two of DC's biggest heroes, it shouldn't be forgotten that the best-known Batman villain has a perfectly good backstory, documented, again, in The Killing Joke. Since Ledger's Joker had no past of which to speak - save endless digressions involving a depressed wife, an abusive father - this new Joker could immediately be set apart if Snyder commits to giving him one. Those absent eyes, that slack mouth, that lolling head - certain of Pitt's mannerisms immediately recall Ledger's loose-limbed incarnation. It's telling that he appeared on a similar list on this site around the time of the release of The Dark Knight Rises (which I will ungraciously not provide a link for), so it seems I'm not alone in thinking there's something to this. In any case, Pitt only seems to have one film, Rob the Mob, on his docket for next year; he might not be waiting around for the call, but, should the phone ring he's bound to pick up...