Epic Joker Fan Art Imagines Willem Dafoe as Batman Villain

Warner Bros. and DC Comics are getting ready to begin filming their upcoming sequel to 2019’s Joker, and all eyes are definitely on the project. Lady Gaga is rumored to join the film as Harley Quinn, with the film being labeled a musical. Joaquin Phoenix will return as the titular psychopath, so everything is looking up from here. Joker is a character that’s beloved by Batman fans of all ages, and there are a lot of opinions on who should play the character or who is the best interpretation. One name that has always been floated around for the role is Willem Dafoe, with the actor even acknowledging the fan casting while appearing on late night TV. Now, one fan has created a cool design for the actor as the Clown Prince of Crime. 

An Instagram artist that goes by the handle of @Skull101ify created a cool concept that imagined Dafoe as Joker. Dafoe dons a classic Joker look in the fan art with bleached skin, green hair, a purple shirt, and blood red lips. The actor looks like he was born to play the role and this makes us want him as the character even more. You can check out the art below!

Most recently, the Joker character has appeared in The Batman, with Eternals star Barry Keoghan in the role. His Joker look is much more gruesome than those that came before him and has quickly been compared to the Death of the Family arc where the Joker’s face is cut off and reattached, further disfiguring the criminal clown left with green hair, bleached white skin, and a permanent rictus grin after falling into a vat of acidic chemicals. Reeves revealed the inspiration for his take on the Joker: a homage to the mutilated mouth of Conrad Veidt’s Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs, the 1928 silent film that influenced the DC Comics character. 

“He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike [Marino] and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here where it’s not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it’s not the [Christopher] Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don’t know where they came from,” Reeves explained. “What if this is something that he’s been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he’s had this very dark reaction to it, and he’s had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.’”

Directed by Matt Reves, The Batman stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/the Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as GCPD’s James Gordon, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham D.A. Gil Colson, Jayme Lawson as mayoral candidate Bella Reál, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and Colin Farrell as Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot. The film is streaming on HBO Max now.

What do you think of Willem Dafoe as the Joker? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @NateBrail up on Twitter!