11 Perfect Casting Choices That Made Comic Book Movies

11. Jack Nicholson As The Joker

You can tell just by looking at Jack Nicholson's wicked smile that he was born to play the Joker - and the fact he notoriously plays mentally unstable individuals in his movies adds to his suitability for the role (look at his performances as Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo€™s Nest and Jack Torrance in The Shining, for example).

In the first relatively modern Batman movie in 1989, Nicholson brilliantly portrayed a vain (with a penchant for nice suits and a trophy girlfriend), cackling, psychotic version of the character, with a truly macabre sense of humour, who is never without his trademark trick items and who displays a genuine fear of the titular Dark Knight. He exemplified the macabre, dark, quirky style that Tim Burton likes to stamp on his movies.

Nicholson's performance was relentless and he obviously gave it his all in every single scene. The actor described his thoughts toward his performance as €œproud€ and considered it to be a piece of pop art - and for a man who takes his art as seriously as Jack Nicholson to say that, he must have done it well. He helped to make Batman what it was and genuinely paved the way for the comic book movie villains we know and love today to be so popular.