Sean Penn turned down role as the Joker

Sean Penn is busy with Fast Times and Ridgemont High 2: Spicoli Returns so he cant be bothered with any of the newer Batman flicks.
[only kidding.]

Sean Penn? never crossed my mind, he would be considered...figures he would turn it down...I just dont see this as his type of movies....Spicoli Rules!!!

Never would have crossed my mind either. I can't really see him playing the Joker, and that's just weird because I have faith that he could play just about anything. Just thinking about the diversity of characters he has played in movies like "Mystic River" and "I Am Sam", I truly think he could play just about anything. But I was watching "Sin City" on Starz the other night, and I gotta say, after watching the scene where Dwight is driving Jackie Boy's corpse to hide it in the tar pits, I kind of think that Benicio Del Toro would make an AWESOME Joker. If anybody doubts me, watch that scene again.

As an interesting side note, Brian Bolland's drawings of the Joker from the flashbacks in "The Killing Joke" do rather resemble Sean Penn. I also remember reading the original Batman stories last year when "Batman Begins" was released. As expected from comic books from that era, they were mostly juvenile stories with cookie cutter villains, however, when the Joker was introduced, that changed somewhat. Ironically, he was the first Batman villain I found I could take remotely seriously. He was far colder and more malevolent than the Romero version and didn't laugh or joke very much at all. There was something actually kind of scary about him, so it's a small wonder that the Joker pretty much became one of the more popular (if not most popular) Batman villains in the rogue's gallery. *Spoiler alert* for those who haven't read the comics. It's kind of a sad irony that in a very early issue Robin nearly killed the Joker by knocking him off a building only to have Batman save him. Before Robin came along, Batman didn't really seem to mind killing his enemies. I wonder if Nolan's "The Dark Knight" could play with this idea?

I remember when this was rumored. I thought it was an interesting choice, but you have to bear in mind that The Joker is supposed to at least have some sense of humor, and as we've all seen lately, Sean Penn no longer HAS a sense of humor.

And dersu, just because in spring of 1940, Batman was killing his foes... quite a bit, I might add... doesn't mean that he should start to think about it again. BATMAN BEGINS has already established that Batman is not a killer. Nor will he be anytime in the future. That was one thing that majorly sucked donkey balls about the first two Burton films... Batman seemed to have no moral qualms about killing anyone. In the first film, he drives the Batmobile through Axis Chemicals and drops two bombs that kill everyone there, then flies in his heavily-armed Batwing with his missiles and Vulcan cannons, blowing away flunkies left and right. In RETURNS, he sets a guy on fire, straps dynamite to the chest of another, but then has "moral qualms" about Catwoman wanting to kill Max Schreck. Apparently, Batman wanted all the killing to himself. Even in Miller's DKR, he can't bring himself to kill the Joker. So this ain't gonna happen, thank God.

tkay42one you are right about del toro in Sin City..I remember that scene..He is lanky enough to be the Joker............

This would have been a very strong choice had he taken it... I am really interested to see how Ledger will portray this role. He will be under the microscope, as the Joker is THE comic villain, and everyone will have different ideas of how he should be played.... my vote is for the mentally ill Killing Joke version.

*Spoilers* for those who didn't read the comics or see "Batman Begins." I didn't say Batman should be a killer. I said I wonder if Nolan's "The Dark Knight" (or future movies) could play with the fact that the Joker was nearly killed by Robin only to be saved by Batman. The Joker, of course, went on to cripple Barbara Gordon and kill Jason Todd (one of the Robins). For the record, "Batman Begins" did at least acknowledge Batman's murderous past in the scene when he took a gun to the courthouse to try and murder Joe Chill.

Yeah, I am not that big a fan of Ledger as Joker, but Penn. Hell no! He's got chops, but not the right ones. Any day of the week I would take Ledger over Penn. Even though i was watching my BTTF trilogy the other day and I remember somebody mentioning Crispin Glover, and that makes more sense than Penn.