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Before the Joker, there was Loki. The Clown Prince of Crime may take on different personas and attitudes to befuddle Batman and the citizens of Gotham, whether it be Heath Ledger constantly changing his story about his scars or the prank-filled capers he pulled off in early comic book stories by Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson. But even on his best days, the Joker is borrowing moves from the Norse trickster god Loki, a shapeshifter known for his ability to not just change his form, but also his motivations and backstory.
Yet, in a surprising reversal. The man most associated with Loki these days looked to the Joker, not Norse mythology, for inspiration. Specifically, Tom Hiddleston drew ideas from Jack Nicholson‘s take on in the 1989 movie Batman. “Truthfully, I don’t think I would’ve played Loki without that film,” Hiddleston told host Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“I think the way Jack Nicholson played the Joker… at the time in my life when I saw it, it made such an impact on my imagination.” In particular, Hiddleston was drawn to joy that Nicholson brought to the character. “I understood he was the villain, but he was having such a good time — that could describe somebody else I know — and he was so charismatic and so inventive and so free.”
That description may help us understand why Hiddleston returns to the character so often, even planning to reprise the role for this year’s Avengers: Doomsday, despite having brought him to a satisfying conclusion at the end of Loki‘s second season. In Hiddleston’s hands, Loki has indeed been inventive and free, moving from the clear baddie of Thor and The Avengers to something of an antihero and even sacrificing himself at the hands of Thanos to allow Banner to escape to Earth at the start of Avengers: Infinity War. Each time he appears on screen, Hiddelston’s Loki is a little different: sometimes threatening, sometimes noble, always charming.
That mercurial element tracks with Nicholson’s performance in Batman. Although the film gives Joker a definitive origin as a high-level gangster who gets set up by his boss—an origin absent from the comics—Nicholson seems to be playing a different person in every scene. Sometimes, he’s a mastermind who seeks the forceful takeover of Carl Grissom’s (Jack Palance) gang. Other times, he’s an art lover who simply wants to express himself. Sometimes he’s a populist revolutionary, sometimes he wants to kill them all.
For Hiddleston, the appeal of the Nicholson Joker isn’t all that a complicated. “I guess it’s in my make up as a fan, as someone who loved movies as a child. I loved villains who enjoyed themselves,” he admitted, adding to the list Alan Rickman in Die Hard and James Mason in North by Northwest. “I mean, Alan Rickman, particularly in that film, was having such a good time and was so likeable.”
Obviously, Hiddleston has succeeded in making Loki likable for fans and enjoyable to play. But if he ever gets tired of playing the god of stories, then there is an opening for a certain grinning villain in James Gunn’s new DCU…
The post How Tom Hiddleston Channeled the Joker to Play Loki appeared first on Den of Geek.
