Hi guys, Henry here from the Closer Look and today I'll be asking the question, what makes a great villain? For this case study I'll be focusing primarily on the Joker from The Dark Knight, all materials used in this video are for non-profit educational purposes and fall well within the guidelines of fair use. So The Dark Knight.
This film received practically universal praise and according to IMDB it's the 4th best film of all time. There are many reasons why this film is considered in such high regard, but today I will be focusing on just one, the Joker. The vast majority of filmmakers, screenwriters and storytellers alike will all tell you the same thing, that the villain must have more power than the protagonist.
Personally, I think it's an interesting statement, but I respectfully disagree. Sort of. In the Dark Knight, the Joker has no money and no resources to mention.
He has absolutely no power in the traditional sense, yet he is still one of the best villains of all time. A bad filmmaker will give his villains a massive army, a near limitless power. Take, for example, Red Skull in Captain America, Sauron in Lord of the Rings, Malekith in Thor 2, Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy.
The list is endless. All of these characters have massive amounts of traditional power, and none whatsoever of the non-traditional sort. This is where these villains differ from the Joker. He has power, just not in the way we're accustomed to.
His entire power comes from his ability to attack with great intelligence and cunning straight at the Dark Knight's greatest weaknesses. The Joker even confesses how he has no real resources at all. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. So this leads me to add point one onto the villain creation guide. Your villain needs to have more power than the hero, but don't make the mistake of giving them only the traditional power we've just discussed.
It's fine for your villains to have massive amounts of money or a group of intimidating henchmen, but unless you can back that up with an interesting villain, your conflict will be bland and uninteresting. This leads me to my second point. which is another field of characterization that the Joker excels at. Okay, I know this is completely unrelated to everything, but did you know the character Rachel was played by two different actresses in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight?
Someone told me last week, and it blew my mind. Anyway, I just thought you might want to know. Anyway, another element of characterization that the Joker excels at is motivation.
This right here is the bread and butter of a good villain. If your villain has a very weak or no real motivation, then your audience won't believe that character at all, and the conflict will again become bland and uninteresting. A word of advice, but if you want your audience to empathize with the villain, having a solid motivation is the best way to do so.
Take for example Loki in the film Thor. His motivation is not more power or revenge, but rather the love and approval of his father. If you want to see how I reached that conclusion then click here to see my video on why Thor is the best Marvel movie of all time. Sorry, sometimes I can't help myself. Anyway, the Joker has an amazing motivation which is cleverly explained by Alfred right here.
Because some men aren't looking for anything logical like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn. The Joker's motivation is not more power or personal gain, unlike 99% of all other villains. He quite simply is a nihilist, which means he doesn't have any morals or beliefs.
He genuinely doesn't care about any human life, including his henchmen, and also including his own. Which is illustrated by how he starts laughing maniacally when Batman throws him off of a roof towards the end. The Joker's philosophy of nothing really matters is illustrated at least 50 different times in the movie, but one of my favourite times is when he tells his story about how he got his scars.
The first time he says his father did it while on a drunk rampage, and the next time he says he did it to make his wife happy. The difference between these two stories is no accident. It proves that the Joker truly doesn't care about anything, including his past, because to him, it doesn't matter. Because to him, everything is a joke. And believe it or not, his end goal was never to destroy Gotham, it was to prove that deep down, everyone is like him.
This battle between the Joker and Batman is highlighted in their last shared scene. The Joker doesn't want to destroy the world, he just wants to convince it that when it comes down to it, him and the rest of humanity are not so different. In his opinion, for a regular person to become the Joker, And the Batman's philosophy is the exact opposite.
He believes all criminals can be redeemed, that deep down everyone has the potential for good. The dynamic between the Joker and Batman is not the same as most other hero-villain dynamics out there. In most other stories, the villain wants to achieve an end goal, and the hero is the only obstacle in the road that can stop them. Or vice versa, the hero wants to achieve the goal, and the villain is the only one who can stop them. Well, in The Dark Knight, That is not the case.
They are both competing for the exact same goal, the soul of Gotham. And what I consider to be the icing on the cake for the Joker is in the end, he wins. The Joker is interesting because at every point he is one step ahead of the Batman. A genius move by the Joker was with Harvey and Rachel. He lied to Batman and swapped their addresses, meaning no matter what Batman chose, he would lose.
If he chose to save Rachel, she would die and the Joker would win. And if he chose to save Harvey, he would die and the Joker would again win. In the end he accomplishes his true goals and shows the world Gotham's true face. The face of a big lie.
See, when the Joker turned Harvey Dent into Two-Face, he did it for a very specific reason. To create another scenario where it is impossible for the Batman to win. If Batman and Gordon decided to reveal to the world that Harvey became Two-Face, that he murdered innocent people, then the reputation of Gotham's government would be forever tarnished and the Joker would win. And if they decided to cover up Harvey's atrocities and maintain his reputation as a White Knight of Gotham, which is what they did in the end, the Joker would win.
Because an entire system of justice, millions of people now believe and place their faith in one big lie. Now that's one hell of a last laugh that even the Joker can appreciate. This leads me to another point of making a great villain.
Let them win. This doesn't mean they have to have a complete victory in the end, but when the villain is victorious, even in small little ways like the Joker did throughout the whole movie, it adds a realistic grit to the story and makes the audience feel even more invested in the hero's quest as they want him to succeed even more. If the Joker any of his plans, the audience would have been less engaged in the story. I have a technique I like to use whenever I want to test whether the villain will have an interesting dynamic with the protagonist. Try and swap your villain around with other villains in fiction, and ask yourself does it have any impact on the narrative and is it still largely the same?
If your answer is it makes no difference, then your villain still needs a little more work. If Nolan put another version of the Joker in this film, it just wouldn't- work right. Jared Leto's Joker, Jack Nicholson's Joker, or even the animated series Joker, none of them would have worked because of the nature of the film.
But this is the only incarnation of Batman that has gone for absolute realism. And if the Joker were making wacky jokes or using explosive whoopee cushions for cheap gags, it just wouldn't be believable. The Joker is delivered in a tone that is consistent with the rest of the Dark Knight trilogy. A tone of utter realism.
And this is why the Joker in this film is the best villain of all time. When Jack Nicholson's Joker killed a man by throwing a quill at his throat, it was interesting, but it was also quite ridiculous, and reminded the audience that they weren't watching real life, they were watching a movie. And in the animated universe where the Joker poisons a group of people with his smile gas, it's shocking, yes, but it's also quite cartoony in nature and reminds the viewer that they aren't watching real life, they are watching an animation. But that is where the Dark Knight is completely different to every other incarnation of Joker in history. When the Joker slams a pencil through that man's head it was shocking, yet completely believable.
When the Joker blows up that hospital, sets fire to that pile of money and laughs when he's thrown to his death, these moments are all delivered in a completely believable way. At no point in the Dark Knight does the immersion break for the audience, because the Joker is delivered in such a terrifyingly realistic way. The audience believes, every second he is on screen, he isn't just a character from a book.
He is a real-life human being. Red Skull, Sauron, Loki, they aren't inherently bad villains, but the audience doesn't believe that they truly exist in our world. But with the Joker...
He is so believable, so hauntingly accurate to real life, that while the audience is watching The Dark Knight, the Joker could be... right behind them. Thanks for watching this week's video. This is the second video I've ever uploaded onto my channel and I've no clue whether I should continue uploading this kind of content. If you have any ideas at all on how I can improve my content then please tell me in the comments below.
All feedback, both good and bad, is hugely appreciated. Also if you could like and subscribe that would be pretty prime too. Anyway, thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time on The Closer Look.