‘The Dark Knight’ scene that pays tribute to the 1960s Batman TV series
The last thing on anybody’s mind was Adam West when the time came for Christopher Nolan to reboot Batman, but The Dark Knight still managed to pay tribute to the kitsch classic while taking the filmmaker’s grounded and gritty reinvention of the mythos to new heights.
After Joel Schumacher had done a stellar job of running the franchise into the ground with Batman & Robin, a movie so bad George Clooney hasn’t been able to stop apologising for it since 1997, it became unequivocally clear that channelling the camp spirit of the 1960s TV series simply didn’t work in the modern age.
Nolan came on board and ended up launching not one but two cinematic crazes, with Batman Begins giving rise to an era of reboots that strove to root themselves in at least some form of tangible reality, while The Dark Knight ended up becoming one of the 21st century’s most influential blockbusters that became a touchstone for many and strongarmed the Academy Awards into expanding the ‘Best Picture’ field.
It was the kind of impact superhero movies simply didn’t have up until that point, but as straight-laced and serious as the Dark Knight trilogy was, Nolan slipped in a sly nod to West in the opening scene of the middle chapter, which ends on the unforgettable introduction to Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning Joker.
Slowly whittling his cohorts down one-by-one after convincing them that turning on each other is in their best interests, the crew performing the heist are all wearing clown masks to protect their anonymity. On the surface, it makes perfect sense because the Joker is the one pulling the strings, but it doubles as a deep cut nod to Cesar Romero’s moustachioed proponent of hammy overacting.
In January 1966, Romero’s ‘Clown Prince of Crime’ made his first appearance in ‘The Joker is Wild’, the fifth episode of Batman‘s first season. In the final act, before West and Burt Ward save the day, the dynamic duo realise the Joker will be at the Gotham City Opera.
When they descend on the scene, the Joker is wearing a clown mask almost identical to the one sported by Ledger in The Dark Knight, even if Nolan’s take on the iconic comic book villain wasn’t tasked to perform the aria ‘Vesti la giubba’ from Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.
It would have been a very different movie if he had, but even though The Dark Knight is about as far removed from the Batman TV show as it was possible to get, Nolan found a way to insert a sly wink to the long and illustrious history of the ‘Caped Crusader’ by sneaking in a subtle homage to Romero popping up for the first time on the small screen and blowing sneezing powder into West’s face.
