The Big Picture
The Dark Knight Rises was rumored to feature Heath Ledger’s Joker, but his untimely death prevented his return. The initial treatment for Batman 3 included plans for the Joker to play a significant role in the film. Christopher Nolan decided to exclude the Joker entirely from The Dark Knight Rises out of respect for Ledger and to avoid addressing a real-life tragedy.
The rumor that The Dark Knight Rises was supposed to feature the return of Heath Ledger’s Joker has followed the film since its inception. To be fair, it’s easy to see why. Despite initially being a controversial choice for the role, Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight earned universal acclaim from fans and critics alike, and has since been cited as the greatest in the entire superhero genre. It’s no surprise Warner Bros. would be eager to bring him back, but the devastating events of January 2008 put a stop to that.
Ledger’s passing at the tender age of just 28 meant that he was never able to experience this praise firsthand – nor was he able to collect his statuette for Best Supporting Actor at the 81st Academy Awards. Few things that achieve legendary status stay confined within a single film, hence those rumors. Speculation that the Joker was intended to play a role in The Dark Knight Rises – and that Christopher Nolan considered using a mixture of unused footage and CGI to resurrect him following Ledger’s death – has been the subject of much discussion for over ten years. Was Tom Hardy’s Bane supposed to interact with the Joker?
The Dark Knight Rises
Eight years after the Joker’s reign of chaos, Batman is coerced out of exile with the assistance of the mysterious Selina Kyle in order to defend Gotham City from the vicious guerrilla terrorist Bane.
Release Date July 16, 2012
Rating PG-13
Runtime 164
Tagline The legend ends.
The Joker Was Initially Planned for ‘Batman 3’
In May 2005 – the same month Batman Begins premiered – the film’s co-writer, David S. Goyer, revealed the existence of two treatments that would form the basis for The Dark Knight Trilogy should the first entry prove successful. “The next one would have Batman enlisting the aid of Gordon and Dent in bringing down The Joker…but not killing him,” as Goyer confirmed during an interview with Premiere Magazine, adding that, “in the third, the Joker would go on trial, scarring Dent in the process.”
It’s hard to extrapolate much from these brief descriptions, but they give the impression that The Dark Knight was originally supposed to be a two-part film – or at the very least, the prelude to a much grander adventure. But crucially, they also expose that the Joker would have played a significant role in both. Given that Batman’s Rogues Gallery is often regarded as the best in comics, the idea of having the same villain serve as the primary antagonist in successive films was a bold prospect (especially when they had yet to cast anyone in the part), but the groundwork had been laid for the Joker’s return in the then-untitled Batman 3.
But as anyone who has watched these films will already knows, things didn’t turn out that way. It isn’t clear when the decision was made to coalesce Goyer’s treatments into one narrative, but considering how definitively The Dark Knight wraps up the struggle between Batman (Christian Bale) and the Joker for the fate of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), it presumably happened rather early. History has vindicated this as the right outcome, with part of The Dark Knight’s appeal coming from its self-contained design (in hindsight, a welcome relief from the onslaught of interconnected storylines that has since infested much of this genre). As a consequence, however, it likely would have left much (if not all) of Goyer’s second treatment unusable, necessitating a complete overhaul that left the Joker’s role in a potential third film uncertain. This wouldn’t have prevented his inclusion in the trilogy’s closing installment, but with The Dark Knight providing a solid conclusion to his role in the overarching narrative, justifying a second appearance would be challenging.
Interviews Hint That Heath Ledger’s Joker Was Supposed To Return
When The Dark Knight exploded into theaters in July 2008, it did so to the sound of critical acclaim in one eardrum and cinematic revolution in the other (Nolan’s own “I am become death” moment, in a strange piece of foresight to his most recent directing endeavor with Oppenheimer). A deluge of box-office records and awards from prestigious events flooded its wallets, but as discussions shifted their way towards the still unconfirmed (but certain to happen) third entry, one question was the subject of intense speculation – how could it circumvent the legacy of Heath Ledger’s performance?
Even the greatest actor in the world would find rivaling such an incredible feat of artistry intimidating, and with Ledger’s death ruling out a traditional reprisal, it left Nolan in a difficult situation. The solution Warner Bros. suggested was to use the Riddler as the main villain due to the many similarities he shares with the Joker (with the studio keen to cast Leonardo DiCaprio in the role), but Nolan wasn’t convinced. Following a masterpiece with a copycat was destined to end poorly, hence why he elected to use Bane (Tom Hardy), a character so fundamentally opposed to the Joker it would be virtually impossible to draw comparisons between them.
Christopher Nolan Wasn’t Sure About ‘The Dark Knight Rises’
Image via Warner Bros.
But that still left the matter of how to address the Joker moving forward. When last we see him – tangling from a skyscraper after the people of Gotham prove they’ll never be as morally corrupt as him – he is still very much alive, and with his successful corruption of Harvey Dent forming a vital pillar of The Dark Knight Rises’ plot, it seems unlikely that he was never considered for even a minor appearance. Evidence that this was the case has since been disclosed by Ledger’s sister during the promotional circuit for the 2017 documentary I Am Heath Ledger, revealing that “he was so proud of what he had done in Batman. And I know he had plans for another.” This assertion supports a similar claim from Eckhart way back in 2008 that, while he was only signed for one film, “Heath was supposed to go on.” After Ledger’s death made a reprisal impossible, it was reported from a “source close to Nolan” that the director intended to use a mixture of unused footage infused with CGI to allow for the Joker’s return (albeit in a “fleeting moment”), but this was swiftly confirmed as untrue. “I heard the rumor,” said producer and Nolan’s wife Emma Thomas. “We’re not doing that.”
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It’s worth remembering that Nolan was reluctant to even make a third film for the longest time. He only committed to the project in February 2010 after spending the better part of eighteen months fretting over whether it would be a good idea (“How many good third movies in a franchise can people name?” as he joked, perhaps with more sincerity than he’d intended, in a 2008 interview with the Los Angeles Times), and even when he did, it was only because of a story he had begun developing after The Dark Knight’s release.
“We didn’t discuss the third film until two or three months after The Dark Knight had come out,” Goyer confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter, adding that, while the Joker would have inevitably changed the dynamic of the film, Ledger’s death prohibited these conversations from taking place. Due to Nolan’s insistence on focusing on a single film at a time (to the extent that even Bale wasn’t certain if he’d be called back for another one), it’s hard to gauge the validity of the earlier revelations that Ledger had the go-ahead for a second inning. With work on The Dark Knight Rises’ screenplay only commencing in early 2010, it’s likely that any chance of the Joker making an appearance was long gone by this point.
‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Focuses on Tom Hardy’s Bane
Image via Warner Bros.
In the end, the decision was made to exclude the Joker from The Dark Knight Rises entirely: no cameo, no namedrop, not even a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Easter egg… absolutely nothing. Nolan explained his reasons for doing this in an interview, saying that “I didn’t want to in any way try and account for a real-life tragedy. That seemed inappropriate to me. We just have a new set of characters and a continuation of Bruce Wayne’s story, not involving the Joker.” It’s a judgment that continues to leave some viewers baffled (especially if you watch The Dark Knight Rises back-to-back with its predecessor), but in retrospect, it was the only solution to this dilemma. As Nolan already alluded to, The Dark Knight Rises isn’t the Joker’s story – it’s the story of a broken man overcoming a lifetime of pain to finally allow himself the happy ending he had deceived himself into believing was unattainable. It’s one of the few iterations of a comic book character achieving an actual conclusion, forming the ideal capstone to arguably the medium’s greatest representation on the silver screen.
But where does that leave the Joker? Why, in the realm of Hollywood legend of course. Nolan’s refusal to exhume the Joker for a film he had nothing to do with (yes, he created Two-Face, but The Dark Knight Rises is concerned with the ramifications of this event, not the event itself) solidified the character’s reputation in the eyes of the moviegoing audience – a verdict aided by the knowledge that trying to resurrect him without the irreplaceable actor who had portrayed him would be insanity. Despite the persistence of those rumors, there’s no hard evidence that Nolan seriously considered including the Joker in the trilogy’s closing installment, and certainly not via CGI trickery that would be tantamount to puppeteering the dead. In all likelihood, this is nothing more than an idealistic pipedream from fans – admirable, but mistaken.
Besides, there’s an argument that the Joker’s omission from The Dark Knight Rises worked to his benefit. The idea that not a single inhabitant of Gotham dares to speak his name following the traumatic events of The Dark Knight speaks volumes about his actions, contributing to his legacy as one of the most terrifying villains in the history of cinema. It might not have been intentional, but it resulted in the greatest possible tribute to one of his era’s most gifted performers.
The Dark Knight Rises is available to stream on Max in the U.S.
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