Ranking Every DC Movie Villain From Worst To Best

There's an argument that says Nicholson's Joker is more of a pure adaptation: he's a remake of what was originally put on the page, and thus heavily influenced by the source. Beyond some parallels in his character design, the name and the mysterious backstory, Heath Ledger isn't an adaptation, he's a complete reimagining, which was obviously Nolan's intent.

So for comic book fans, Nicholson's Joker is probably the better of the two, or at least the more faithful, which always counts for something.

In his own right though, Nicholson's Joker is a heavyweight character: he's menacing, unhinged and bags of destructive pleasure. If you ignore the unnecessary adaptation of him into Batman's origin story, he's also mostly without fault. He's colourful, larger than life, ridiculous... or in other words, a real comic book villain, and he clearly has a lot of fun saying things that immediately belong on t-shirts, without ever sounding too ridiculous.

Crucially, Nicholson knows how to play unstable and how to show a bubbling undercurrent of violence: his presence is enough to suggest that the Joker could beat most men in a straight fight, and the twinkle in his eyes says he wouldn't fight fair.

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