“Why so serious?” – The Joker in The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger’s incredible performance as the Joker will go down as one of the greatest performances of all time. Ledger was the Joker, becoming totally unrecognizable as he immersed himself in his role.
The fact that the line is used multiple times, each time with a different story preceding it, furthers the mystery that is Nolan’s Joker. There is no back story. No truth we can know about his past. The unknown is what makes him all the more sinister.
The words on their own have no deeper meaning, it really is a simple phrase. But the way in which Ledger delivers those three words, and the context which they are put in, make it one of the most iconic movie lines ever uttered.
It represents everything that the Joker stands for: Chaos, Anarchy, Madness. The very things that make him such an unpredictable, and therefore difficult, foe for Batman to deal with.