There is hardly anything more enthralling than the decade long psychological battle between Batman and the Joker. Comics, animated series, Batman (1989), The Dark Knight, and the recently released film “Joker” have led us to believe that DC has something so unique and profound that Marvel does not even comprehend challenging it on that.
Batman and Joker’s rivalry is neither about fistfights nor about intelligence. It’s not even about arrogance or insecurity. It is about ideology. Joker tries to prove his point that there can be no “real” good human being on planet earth, and Batman counters him. This ideological battle pushes both of them to the point of madness, where it is difficult to get away for any of them.
Batman-Joker rivalry is a paragon of how to write a perfect hero-villain dynamic, and the very first thing you can notice about the duo is that each is the opposite image of the other.
In other words, you can say that one created the other, and they only can co-exist. You can call them an alter ego of each other.
Joker is a maniacal manifestation of pure evil, and all his plans, plots, and deception are meant to destroy Batman’s ideology. Remember, Batman does not kill Joker because he does not believe in killing anyone, and Joker does not kill Batman because he is not interested in killing him. What Joker wants is actually quite simple but very tricky to understand; to put it in simple terms-‘he just wants to show that everyone in this world is just like him. Pure evil, with varying degrees.’
The way you see this rivalry is your business, but one thing is for sure this rivalry is one of the most entertaining things to witness in a cinema. To quote a dialogue from the film The Dark Knight, “This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.”
Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel “The Killing Joke” represents this ideological rivalry eloquently where the writer shows how Batman and Joker need each other in some bizarre idiosyncratic way. If you haven’t read the novel, no problem, the 2016 film adaptation of the novel has arrived at your favorite streaming network.
“The Killing Joke” is one of the rare and the most brilliant origin stories of Joker, which sees Mr. J’s break out from Arkham Asylum and his subsequent plan to drive Commissioner James Gordon towards irreversible insanity. The rarest of rare thing about the novel was its offering of J’s backstory, in which we see him struggle in his early days as a standup comedian (which also gave inspirations for the Todd Phillips’ 2019 Oscar-winning blockbuster).
Kevin Conroy (Batman) and Mark Hamill (Joker) shared the limelight courtesy of their excellent voice acting.
Check the film out on Netflix! You will also get to hear the infamous “Killing Joke” in the final minutes of the film.
Source-You May Now Be Able To See “Batman: The Killing Joke” On Netflix
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