Its difficult to remember now, but in 2006, when The Dark Knight was first in production, there was a lot of consternation over Nolan's choice to revive the Joker, because how could any performance possibly match up with Jack Nicholson's work in the 1989 Batman. It seems kind of silly now, given the deafening buzz that Heath Ledger's performance has received, but I remember a lot of people trying to convince me that bringing back the Joker would be a devastatingly poor choice for the series. After watching Batman, my view is quite different. In my opinion, while Jack Nicholson does a fine job with what he's given to do, the film and its interpretation of the Joker ultimately fail.
Although its called Batman, the film is really about the Joker. Batman's the first major character the audience sees, but after the first scene, he disappears. We don't even see the unmasked Bruce Wayne until about 20 minutes into the film. Instead, most of that time is filled introducing and developing Jack Napier. We learn about his work as a criminal, his illicit affair with the boss' wife, and his generally insane disposition. Before we even meet Bruce Wayne, the character that we're supposed to invest in and care about, we've spent 15 minutes learning about the problems and characteristics of Jack Napier.
This gets at the film's biggest problem, its complete indifference to Bruce Wayne. He's a bland and boring character who is just as empty at the end of the film as he is when we meet him. There's no reason to invest in his character because he doesn't do anything until he dresses up as Batman. The film attempts to hit a couple of points, but it doesn't really care enough to develop any of them. The closest it comes is attempting to set up Bruce's issues with trust, by having him spend most of the movie dodging Vicki and not telling her the truth about his identity. But there's not any real reason for him to need to tell her, since he barely knows Vicki, since she happens to be a reporter who's trying to find the truth about Batman, and especially since she's almost as uninteresting and wooden as he is. There's very little chemistry and almost no reason to invest in this story. And, if that's not enough, Bruce doesn't even tell her the truth. Alfred takes her down to the Batcave without even consulting him. The other attempt at an arc, the concept of revenge, is certainly more fertile ground for a Batman movie, however the film bungles that by saving the story of Bruce's parents its almost over. This idea feels like an afterthought, and doesn't factor into the movie.
In addition to that, I have a couple of problems with the Joker. One is that the film's Gotham City doesn't really have a crime problem, it has a Joker problem. Pretty much every act of violence in the film is planned or executed by the Joker. This may not seem like a problem at first, after all he is the villain. But the whole Batman mythos is predicated on the idea of Gotham as being this awful cesspool of crime. If everything is reduced back to one man, the Gotham doesn't really seem so bad anymore. This goes back to the biggest change that the movie makes: the Joker's responsibility for the Waynes' murder. Batman is no longer a creation of and reaction to a world of senseless violence. Rather, he's been created simply to fight the Joker. The Joker isn't as much the opposite of Batman, as Batman is an answer to the Joker. Another major problem with Burton and Nicholson's Joker: he's funny. The Joker is not a funny character. He's a psychopath who dresses like a clown and murders people. By making him funny, he becomes more harmless. And that's the biggest problem with this interpretation of the Joker. He's a funny, wacky character, who wins over audiences. He's both more watchable and more interesting than Bruce Wayne. And ultimately, he seems more like an advertisement to sell toys than a real villain.
I was going to talk about Harvey Dent (played by Lando himself, Billy Dee Williams), however he really has nothing to do in this film. He's really only in there to tease fans about a future Two Face appearance, and adds nothing to the film.
Ultimately, a superhero movie succeeds when the external threat mirrors the hero's internal struggles. In Batman, this really is not the case at all. Batman has no internal struggle to drive the film and the Joker ends up making a far more lasting impression than Bruce. Tim Burton has said in interviews that the Joker was always a more appealing character to him than Batman. Yet the Joker, like any great archnemesis, really only works in duality with Batman. He can't contrast with his enemy, because his enemy is blank. This is the big failure of Batman, and in my opinion it damaged the series from the start.
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