I think Jack Nicholson was kidding when he told MTV.com that he was “furious” that another actor was cast as The Joker in The Dark Knight, but that hasn’t prevented websites from running with the story.
In the interview, posted yesterday, Nicholson is asked, “What do you think of another actor, Heath Ledger, playing the Joker in next summer’s The Dark Knight“?
Nicholson, who played The Joker in the 1989 movie, responds: “Let me be the way I’m not in interviews. I’m furious. I’m furious. [He laughs.] They never asked me about a sequel with the Joker. I know how to do that! Nobody ever asked me.”
The he punctuates his “outrage” with a laugh is what makes me think he’s, well, joking. But what do I know?
He goes on to praise the genius of director Tim Burton, and to lament the direction the Batman movies took: “I don’t think they ever really captured Tim Burton’s spirit [since he stopped being involved]. They kind of drove the franchise into the ground. Tim Burton’s a genius. He had the right take on it. That’s why I did the movie. I did the movie based on a single conversation with him. We both come from the cartoon world originally. We had similar ideas. Tim said [the Joker] should have a humorous dark side to him.”
November 8th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
He’s either joking or an idiot… and I’m tempted to say he’s an idiot, based on his implicitly lumping together Joel Schumacher and Christopher Nolan in that quote you provided towards the end of the post.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Well, he’s right about the movies that come immediately after Tim Burton driving the franchise into the ground. And he’s right that neither of the other directors captured Tim Burton’s spirit, though Nolan obviously wasn’t trying to.
It may just be that he prefers Burton’s style more than explicitly disliking what Nolan has done. Just like his Joker comment, it would be nice if we had more info from him about what he really meant.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Actually, Burton himself was the first one who started driving the Batman franchise into the ground, because after the awesomeness of Burton’s first Batman film, Batman Returns was such shit that it actually made the first Schumacher Batman film look almost kind of good by comparison.
Michelle Pfeiffer BDSM Catwoman = win, but Danny DeVito mutant hellbeast Penguin = ULTRA MEGA SUPER SAIYAN FAIL.