MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Normans and Jokers

Normans and Jokers

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
2 replies | jump to latest

There's a trailer out("teaser plus") for a new movie about The Joker of Batman fame, but its just called "Joker." Coming in October.

As has seemed the case for decades now, it does seem that the Joker stands alone and apart as a comic book character -- something about him made the leap out of the "DCU" and into that cinematic land where the great villains of screen history dwell. Count Dracula. Darth Vader. Hannibal Lecter. Norman Bates. The Joker.

I believe that "Batman"(1989) with Jack Nicholson as the Joker, and The Dark Knight (2008, just short of 20 years later) with Oscar-winning tragic Heath Ledger as the Joker, are the two biggest Batman grossers(probably adjusted for inflation with the Nicholson picture.) There's just something about the Joker that lifts up the whole franchise.

And yet, much as I think we got two great Jokers(of different types) with Jack and Heath, we've already had a shockingly bad Joker -- the one played by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad. Too psychotic and goony. Too many tattoos. No comic charm. But that's just my opinion. Also, unlike Jack and Heath, Jared's in a bad movie.

I don't know if Jared is coming back as the Joker in a threatened Suicide Squad sequel, but in the meantime we are about to get...Joaquin Phoenix in the role.

I find this intriguing: Joaquin Phoenix came thisclose to playing...Norman Bates..for Gus Van Sant in his infamous 1998 remake of Psycho.

Here is why: Van Sant had worked with Nicole Kidman and a young, kinda goony Phoenix in To Die For. He offered Kidman Marion Crane and Phoenix Norman Bates. Kidman respectfully declined(too bad -- she would have been better than Anne Heche) but Phoenix said "YES" ...but only if Van Sant could wait for Phoenix to do another movie first. Van Sant couldn't wait, so Vince Vaughn got the job.

I'm not sure that Young Joaquin Phoenix would have done much better than VV in competing with Anthony Perkins, frankly - the younger Phoenix had kind of a dumb, dense visage in "To Die For"(maybe good acting) and lacked Perkins beauty.

That said, Phoenix has matured as a man and as a movie star, he's got SOMETHING. We saw it in "Inherent Vice." And now he is giving us -- from the early trailer -- a particularly pathetic version of the Joker aborning. The clips suggest a rather mentally-off(but not deficient) young man who -- wait for it -- lives with his aging mother and dotes upon her(he even gives her a bath. Eek.)

We see Joaquin's Joker starting out as a paid-for "street clown" with an advertising sign in his hands and a stupid dance to dance -- and thugs beat the crap out of him. The trailer continues this "clown motif" and seems to end with a Joker whose face is more Emmett Kelly than acid-burned ghoul.

"Joker" looks creepy enough that maybe Joaquin will join Jack and Heath(if not Jared) in infamy. Plus I know from my trivia: Cesar Romero gave us the famous 1966 TV version(with his moustache painted over) and Mark Star Wars Hamill voices the Joker in cartoons.

The Jokers are piling up. But I'd say that only Jack(as a prestige superstar gifting us with a summer movie) and Heath(as a young artist surprising us with a surpassingly entertaining performance, and then dying, Robert Walker-style, young) are the good ones.

I'm reminded that when you've got a truly classic movie villain, nowadays you seem to get more than one actor playing him.

The Joker is one example.

And Norman Bates is another.

And Norman is a hard, hard call. Whereas the Joker is anchored by a painted face and a clown-like visage, Norman Bates is, at heart, just a young man. Tony Perkins famously gave us Norman as a very shy, very handsome, very nervous young man, and there's not much there to "honor" beyond being Anthony Perkins -- its as if this one actor was chosen by the Film Gods(and Hitchcock) to play this historically horrific character and give us Norman Bates eternally AS Anthony Perkins.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates held court for a long time. The classic 1960 version lasted in our minds until 1983, when an older Perkins made Psycho II and started to sadly devalue his own character. It got worse in 1986's Psycho III(for Perkins as Norman, even though the movie was better than II) and hit a nadir in 1990's Psycho IV(a bad cable TV movie, with Perkins finally looking old and wizened, no longer the sweet young man of 1960.)

But also in 1990 in Psycho IV...we finally got ANOTHER Norman Bates. Henry Thomas. Grand irony here: he'd been sweet young Elliott in "ET" just 8 years earlier, and now he was a rather strapping young man(older than teenage) who simultaneously couldn't match Perkins and trashed Elliott at the same time(Thomas as Norman was shown on screen doing some really horrible things.)

(In 1987, before Psycho IV, we got a "glimpse" of a Norman Bates in a flashback in the atrocious NBC pilot Bates Motel; Norman was wordlessly played by Tony Perkins double from Psycho III.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

8 years after Henry Thomas version of "Young Norman Bates" in Psycho IV(this Norman is ten years younger than Perkins in 1960 and its hard to believe that one grew into the other), we got Van Sant's infamous remake with Vince Vaughn either horribly miscast(says I and others) or interestingly offbeat(why NOT try a hulking, menacing giant of a smartass as Norman?)

Over ten years after VV's wrong-way Norman, we got what most consider "the best fit yet" in terms of matching the Perkins Model: Freddie Highmore in the "better" Bates Motel series, an R-rated cable series done up in best showrunner/fan fiction seriousness. I personally watched nothing beyond the pilot and the "1960 Hitchcock's Psycho" inspired final season, and..not for me. But evidently for a lot of others.

And Freddie Highmore WAS much better than Vince Vaughn in bringing back the Perkins principle: a psychotic monster(when dressed up as his dead mother) who looks like the most sweet , innocent and kindly young man you'd want to meet. I have two problems with Highmore as Norman: (1) he still lacked the movie star handsome-beauty of young Anthony Perkins(movie stars are unique) and (2) Bates Motel gave us a Norman Bates we really wanted to HATE...he was cruel and nasty and gloatingly got away with things, and we never gave him the sympathy we gave Perkins.

We now have enough Normans and Jokers out there that I'd be hard pressed to say if there is any one "best" anymore.
Some people like Freddie Highmore more than Anthony Perkins(or simply never saw Perkins in the role.) Many people like Heath Ledger better than portly Jack Nicholson as the thin man of the comics(but I loved Jack for making the first "Batman" movie an event by lending his star history, his great voice, and his weird manner to the part.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It will be interesting to see if Joaquin Phoenix lands high with Jack and Heath as the Joker, or falls low with Jared.

And I have to wonder: will we ever get another Norman Bates? Maybe. He's not all that flamboyant a character(indeed, it is the visibly monstrous Mrs. Bates who "doubles" as the true villain of the tale) but maybe somebody , sometime, somewhere, will want to visit the Bates Motel and the Bates Mansion again(these structures have to function TOGETHER to get the full atmospheric wallop of the greatest location for a horror story ever devised.)

Side-bar on Phoenix's Joker: we get the briefest glimpse in the trailer of Robert DeNiro as some sort of Johnny Carson type but with more of an exaggerated Jerry Lewis manner -- the echo of "The King of Comedy" is strong.(As, say some, is the echo of Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver in Joaquin's formative Joker.) It will be nice to see Mr. DeNiro using his prestige star credentials in something that people will see. He's been a bit "out of it" lately.