Hear Mark Hamill Make Trump Tweets Slightly More Villainous as the Joker
The most widely recognized iterations of Batman’s constant foe the Joker would probably have to be Heath Ledger as the unchained mad-dog of The Dark Knight, Jack Nicholson as an urbane creep in Tim Burton’s 1989 film, and to a lesser extent, Cesar Romero’s campy turn in the goofy TV series from the ’60s. But Mark Hamill logged more hours as the Clown Prince of Crime than the rest of them put together, voicing the Joker in the long-running animated series and its many spin-offs. The man with the greatest claim to the Joker persona dusted off his special crazy-voice this week for a more pointedly political purpose than the usual cocktail-party entertainment.
The schtick began when President-Elect Donald Trump fired off an expectedly vindictive tweet for New Year’s Eve, offering his love to the haters and losers who have fought him and lost so badly they don’t even know what to do. Twitter users rightly noted that this man’s messages to the American public often read like the ravings of a mad supervillain, and entreated Hamill to recite the tweets in character as the Joker to see how they fit. Almost too well, it turns out — here’s the New Year’s missive, from the new evildoer known as the Trumpster:
Hamill reprised his new Trumpster persona for another reading, this time turning his attentions to Trump’s apoplectic tweet-storm following Meryl Streep’s speech denigrating him at the Golden Globes. The voice actor re-introduced the Trumpster on Saturday afternoon:
It’s a pretty good gag, tied together by the fact that Donald Trump is only slightly less villainous than the actual Joker. (To our knowledge, the sitting President-Elect has not murdered anyone with his bare hands. To our knowledge.) Cheers to Hamill, and his noble sacrifice — getting his name on Trump’s “people I hate” list, all for our amusement.