The Dark Knight is one of the best movies of the past two decades. It’s also easily the best comic book movie ever made. I think few will argue against this opinion. And one of the best, if not the best aspect of the Christopher Nolan Batman sequel is how immaculately written and performed Joker was. What’s utterly intriguing about Joker in The Dark Knight, is the air of mystery surrounding the character. The idea that he constantly changes his story about how he got his scars, was a stroke of genius by writer David S. Goyer.
Interestingly enough, the initial plan by Warner Bros was to have a clear Joker origin story. During a ComicCon@Home panel, Goyer talked about the apprehension some higher-ups had when they talked about not giving Joker an origin story.
“I do remember when we were talking about, ‘Well, what if the Joker doesn’t really have an origin story?’ Even after the success of Batman Begins, that was considered a very controversial thing, and we got a lot of push-back. People were worried.”
Goyer who also penned the screenplay for Man of Steel went on to talk about the creative decision to have Superman kill Zod at the end of Man of Steel.
“Ironically, there was a scene that we wrote that didn’t get filmed in which [Superman’s adopted father] Jonathan [Kent] takes young Clark hunting and they kill a deer, and young Clark is just gutted by the act, and Jonathan says, ‘It’s a powerful thing to take a life, even if you’re forced to take a life.’ I always thought that would have been interesting… We never filmed it.
We were trying to tell a different type of Superman story, a Superman story that had never been told before. It required taking some big swings,” he continued. “We talked about it, whether or not people would accept it. The editorial staff at DC had accepted it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a mistake. But if you sit there and go, ‘I don’t want to take any risk…’ That’s not a healthy way to approach the material.”
