‘The Dark Knight’ “mistake” that Christopher Nolan learned to love
For the first few years of the 2000s, superhero movies were still considered mindless children’s entertainment. Although Richard Donner’s take on Superman and Tim Burton’s bizarre take on Batman had opened audiences eyes to what comic book entertainment could be, the subsequent iterations of the ‘Caped Crusader’ were more camp than anything else, with Batman and Robin having little to no charm despite its plethora of dad jokes. Although the genre was getting back on track with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Christopher Nolan had something else in mind for Batman.
Having been a part of the most daring movies of the early 2000s, like Memento, Nolan was coming into his own as a director when the prospect of directing a Batman film came to him. Looking to reinvent the character from his camp history onscreen, Nolan’s reboot brought a sense of realism to Bruce Wayne, with Batman Begins showing him training as a ninja before taking down the villainous Ras Al Ghul.
While hopes were high for a sequel, the legacy of The Dark Knight went through the roof when Heath Ledger came on board. Playing a warped iteration of The Joker, Ledger’s presence is magnetic from the moment he comes onscreen, falling somewhere between the lovable clown, a punk rocker, and a modern terrorist all at once.
Although Nolan had been known to make strict lines in the script, Ledger often added his own spaces to make the back-and-forth between The Joker and Batman feel more genuine. While a few improvised moments went off without a hitch, one of the fundamental aspects of his character happened entirely by accident.
Throughout the movie, there are a few moments where The Joker can be seen licking his lips. In the context of the film, it often signifies that he was off in his head, but Nolan wasn’t necessarily a fan of the footage at first.
When talking about the final shots in the movie, Nolan thought that the lip action was a mistake, explaining, “As with a lot of things that Heath would do, at first I thought it was a mistake. Because the prosthetics on his mouth would come a little unstuck. But then it became apparent that he’d really found something”.
For all of the constant voices that The Joker would do, though, the licking of his lips would become practical. Since the cadence of the voice relies on working out different muscles in his throat, Ledger would occasion be licking his lips to keep the cadence steady, which makes him sound closer to someone like Tom Waits than a traditional Joker figure.
When looking at the final footage onscreen, though, that accident also gives a sinister edge to how The Joker moves. Since the villain is set on spreading anarchy and chaos wherever he goes, his tongue sticking out almost evokes the image of what character Harvey Dent would later call “a mad dog”, salivating over his next strike. Ledger may have had a practical reason behind everything The Joker did, but sometimes some of those happy accidents work to the story’s advantage.
