Jared Leto is going to have to do a lot to top Heath Ledger's take on The Joker, and you have to believe that the Dallas Buyers Club star will face plenty of comparisons to what we saw in The Dark Knight back in 2008 when Suicide Squad is released next year. His take is no doubt going to be very different, but now a new theory has surfaced which may just change how you view The Joker from Christopher Nolan's movie. Here's the theory from Reddit user GeneralZee (via Uproxx).
Joker, although a lying psychopath, is actually the hero in The Dark Knight. Before the Joker, Gotham was a mess. Entire sections of the city were closed off due to madness, organized crime ran rampant, and the majority of important city officials were wildly corrupt. The city even tolerated a renegade vigilante who ran around wearing a rubber suit (Okay, special armor and carbon fiber, but they don’t know that). Along comes the Joker and by the end of a very short time, almost all organized crime was eliminated, many corrupt officials were imprisoned or dead, and the city’s Vigilante even went into hiding for 8 years. This was all part of Joker’s masterfully executed plan.
The user goes into greater detail about why The Joker should be perceived as a hero, but the gist is that Batman became "a true villain, the kind that abandons his own principles" when he killed Harvey Dent, and while The Joker manipulated him into doing that, it was part of his plan to rid Gotham City of the vigilante. After all, he also robbed a mafia run bank, screwed up the finances of the city's mobsters, and helped oust the GCPD's crooked cops. Oh, and remember that clapping scene? This theory puts that in an entirely new light. While it came across as sarcastic, the poster believes that The Joker actually "believed in Gordon, one of the few officers on the force who was truly incorruptible." Was The Joker really showing his respect to Gordon? Did he really set out just to make Gotham City a better place? Share your thoughts on all this in the usual place.
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