Anne Hathaway becomes the Joker, scars included, in striking new fan art. With Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime in 2019’s Joker, a new chapter was added to the cinematic history of the most infamous of all Batman villains.
The story of Joker on the big screen is of course not a very long one, but it is reasonably rich in terms of diversity of portrayal. Jack Nicholson began the tale with his largely comical depiction of the character in Tim Burton’s Batman, then Heath Ledger kicked things up a notch when he played a much more serious Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, winning a posthumous Oscar for his performance. Jared Leto, the next man to tackle the Joker after Ledger, didn’t fare as well with audiences or critics, and in fact was largely cut out of Suicide Squad (against the wishes of the film’s director David Ayer).
It remains to be seen what is next for Joker on cinema screens after Phoenix’s widely praised portrayal, but fan artist Bosslogic has given everyone something to think about when it comes to the future of the character with his new creation, which depicts Hathaway as the Clown Prince of Crime. The artist was of course inspired to make his latest work by the scars Hathaway wears in her new movie The Witches, which just released its first trailer. See Hathaway as Joker in the space below:
A female Joker on the big screen would of course be a revolutionary concept, but in fact it’s something that has already been done in the world of comic books thanks to DC’s Flashpoint timeline. In the alternate Flashpoint universe, Bruce Wayne’s mother Martha becomes the Joker (scars and all), after Joe Chill murders the young Bruce instead of Martha and Thomas. This version of the Batman story actually sees Thomas becoming Batman who, in one of the most severe cases of marital discord ever depicted, ends up fighting his own supervillain wife.
Hathaway of course already has her own history with the Batman universe, having played Catwoman in Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Were the Flashpoint version of Joker to ever make it to movie screens, Hathaway would certainly be an interesting choice to take on the challenge, but no doubt she would have loads of competition as every actress in Hollywood lined up for what would clearly be a plum role. As unlikely as the female Joker idea may seem to some, and as hard as it might be for some in the audience to swallow a feminized version of a character who has bizarrely become a hero to them, there’s no doubt that a gender-swapped Joker would create major cultural waves while representing yet another triumph in Hollywood’s quest for more diverse casting. With the precedent already set by Martha Wayne’s comic book Joker, it might not be the worst idea for DC to look into bringing a female version of the character to life for film audiences, if only in a one-off movie.
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