Four DC Movies With Joker Have Won Oscars

Following Joker‘s wins for Best Original Score and Best Actor at the 2020 Academy Awards, every live-action film featuring the character since 1989’s Batman has been awarded at least one Oscar. Prizes awarded on Sunday to composer Hildur Guðnadóttir and actor Joaquin Phoenix for Joker — an R-rated origin story depicting Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck as a mentally troubled, failed stand-up comedian who descends into madness after suffering one particularly bad day in early 1980s Gotham City — brings the total Oscar nominations for films featuring the character to 21, with appearances in the award-winning Batman, The Dark Knight, Suicide Squad and Joker.

The Tim Burton-directed Batman, starring Jack Nicholson as the infamous DC Comics villain, was the character’s first film to be nominated and win an Oscar when it was awarded Best Art Direction-Set Decoration. It would be nearly 20 years before Joker appeared in another live-action Batman feature — 2008’s The Dark Knight — where Heath Ledger played the anarchistic menace opposite Christian Bale’s Batman.

Ledger was posthumously awarded Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster, which also scored Best Achievement in Sound Editing. The Batman Begins sequel earned eight nominations in all.

David Ayer’s DC Extended Universe-set Suicide Squad, where it was Jared Leto in the role of the tattooed clown prince of crime opposite Margot Robbie’s head-over-heels Harley Quinn, was nominated for and won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling.

The Todd Phillips-directed Joker led this year’s Oscars nominees with 11 nominations, including Best Picture, making it the first DC Comics film nominated for the award. Of its 11 nominations — including Best Director for Phillips, Best Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design and Makeup and Hairstyling — Joker won two Oscars, taking home gold for Best Original Score and Best Actor.

Joker is now tied with The Dark Knight for the most Oscar wins for any DC superhero movie. The most-awarded superhero movie at the Oscars remains Marvel Studios’ Black Panther, which won three of its seven nominations.

Forever alone in a crowd, failed comedian Arthur Fleck seeks connection as he walks the streets of Gotham City. Arthur wears two masks — the one he paints for his day job as a clown, and the guise he projects in a futile attempt to feel like he’s part of the world around him. Isolated, bullied and disregarded by society, Fleck begins a slow descent into madness as he transforms into the criminal mastermind known as the Joker.

Joker is now available to own on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray.