Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Topics: DC, DC Comics, Batman, TV And Film
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is considered to be not only one of the best superhero movies of all time but one of the greatest movies ever, in large part, thanks to its amazing cast of characters and soundtrack composers.
Released in 2008, The Dark Knight is a direct sequel to the 2005 movie, Batman Begins which sees Christian Bale return as Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, and more. The Dark Knight was met with high critical acclaim scoring 9.0 on IMDB and 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, further cementing itself as legendary status.
Check out The Dark Knight trailer below!
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Yet, the star of the show has to be the late, great Heath Ledger’s portrayal as the anarchic DC villain, the Joker. Ledger’s version of the Joker was truly incredible and is arguably one of the greatest performances in a Hollywood movie.
Sadly, at the age of just 28, Heath Ledger was a gift taken from this world too soon, passing away in January 2008, roughly six months before the release of The Dark Knight. Thankfully, to this day, Heath Ledger’s legacy as an actor and his portrayal as the Joker continues to live on.
However, in the 2012 follow-up The Dark Knight Rises which brought in Tom Hardy as the villainous Bane, there was no reference to the Joker. Understandably for obvious reasons, he wasn't in the third movie but in terms of story universe, his Joker had to be somewhere, right?
For starters, director Christopher Nolan had decided not to mention the Joker out of respect for Heath Ledger but the novelisation of The Dark Knight Rises suggests that the Joker may have been residing at the infamous Arkham Asylum while Batman was getting into fisticuffs with Bane.
A line in the novel read: “The worst of the worst '' was sent to Blackgate Prison, apart from the likes of the Joker, who was sent to Arkham Asylum. As for his fate after that, we can only speculate but I’d like to think that as told in the comics, this is likely where he met Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel aka Harley Quinn, and at some point, they escaped Arkham Asylum together to cause all sorts of chaos.
If you’ve never watched Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, you need to change that ASAP!