More "Batman:The Dark Knight" News.

OK, so I laid off on the Batman news for a while, because a lot of my readers were quite probably sick to death of hearing about this marketing campaign in excruciating detail, and because I had been waiting for the next big surprise or reveal.

Those of you interested in the subject most likely saw the new Joker picture that was the conclusion to the Whysoserious scavenger hunt, (Although if any of you were looking at the site without your speakers on, then you missed the Joker audio that accompanied the new picture.) Here is the in-focus portion of that picture.


I was not sure what to make of the finger protruding in front of his face in this picture at first, then I realized (after some while) that he is frozen in the act of steepling his fingers in front of his lips in standard evil-genius pose #26. You can only just see the other black-gloved hand against the deep shadows along the right side of his face. Caught mid-steeple (or pre-steeple?), it looked to me at first as though that were a lone middle finger, extended in the "Bird of Disfavor" position. The Evil-Genius pose makes more sense though, considering that's what he is.

Anyway, today we got more news, and much more exciting news, and it doesn't have to do with the viral marketing campaign that started off with the "I believe in harvey dent too.com" site. Instead it comes from a good old fashioned leak.

Kellvin Chavez of LatinoReview.com dropped this little gem this morning. Remember the 7-minute-long IMAX preview I got so excited about? Well, we now have a synopsis of what will occur in that scene. For the full description, and another, far clearer, picture of Heath Ledger as The Joker, just clicky the linky.

One more thing before I go. This Batman is completely unrelated to the Michael Keaton Batman from, like, a million years ago. Right? I mean the origin story is different, right? But according to one interview excerpt I read, this movie will not depict the origin of the Joker, only his "rise to power". Which raises the question: "What IS the origin of this Joker? He has scars along his cheeks, from what? Acid? A Knife? A Katana? Lupus? The old "Head locked in a box with starving rats" trick? The Mutagenic "Ooze" that made the Ninja Turtles?

And in Batman 1, Jack Nicholson's Joker Face was permanently bleached white. He wore fleshtone makeup to pass for reasonably human in a few scenes. Heath's whiteface looks like it is intentionally applied. (and in the new pic, coming off in places.) In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld, "What is the deal with that?"

I hope that they give us some explanation for the Joker's physical origin and not just his political/psychological origin, or "rise to power". That would be disappointing. Disappointing indeed. And when I get disappointed, Mr. Bigglesworth gets Angry. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets Angry, people die!

By the way, Dr. Evil's Curled-Pinky-To-The-Lip is standard evil-genius pose #44.