Nolan wanted the Joker ex nihilo

Batman-on-Film.com’s Bill Ramey is probably the biggest Batman fan this side of…well, me.  He made the trip from Texas to Los Angeles over the weekend to see “The Dark Knight” and participate in the film’s junket, scoring a nicely in-depth interview with director Christopher Nolan.

Here’s the money quote, describing Nolan’s philosophy on whether to include much in the way of an origin story for Heath Ledger’s Joker character:

I felt very strongly that when you take these extraordinary characters — in the movies, I’m talking very much about the movies here. But you take these extraordinary characters and the more you find out about them — where they came from and all — the less interesting they become. And that’s very true to me of say Hannibal Lectre (sic) or Darth Vader. You know when we first saw them onscreen, they were fully formed and an absolute. Unlike Batman — who I wanted very much to explore his origin and where he came from — with heroes it’s just different. But with villains, it’s the opposite. So with The Joker, I wanted present him as an absolute, an agent of chaos and anarchy.

Read the rest here.  They do love the Batman-on-Film Web site (11 years running) at Warners and on the Bat crew, I can tell you that.