The Dark Knight is considered by many to be the finest comic book movie ever made, and a lot of that is owed to the sensational performance Heath Ledger gave as the Joker. His portrayal of the character created one of the true all-time great movie villains, and though the lasting perception of that performance is of a twisted, dark and brutal Clown Prince, it was really the implied violence that created that aura.
The sequel to Batman Begins is certainly dark, but it was also a PG-13 movie. That meant it couldn't get away with certain things, but as with a lot of other films, the rating only enhanced the terror onscreen. This Joker gets up to some rotten stuff - particularly when he kidnaps one of the Batman impersonators - but the audience is never shown the true consequences of his horror.
That almost changed upon release though. In the money burning sequence that occurs late on in the film, Chin Han's Lau can be seen on top of the cash pile. It's heavily implied that he perishes in the blaze, but there isn't a shot of the character as the flames rise. Set photos have, however, shown Lau's corpse atop the pile as the money burned down, confirming that - during production - Nolan intended to show the grisly consequences of Joker's violence.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
