Official solicit:

The Dark Knight Movie Masters Joker

The hyper assortment features higher-end 6″ collectable versions of the heroes and villains of batman, The dark knight. Poseable joints, authentic costumes and realistic faces; You’ll find these figures are accurate down to twist in the smile on the joker. Featuring highly detailed sculpts and superior articulation. Batman truly has the moves to counter his foes’ laughable attacks.

May 2008
MSRP 9.99USD

From the Movie Masters line, as sculpted by the Four Horsemen, comes the Heath Ledger likeness of the Joker. Thanks to a shipping mistake on the part of toysrus.com, I ended up with the “Clown Prince” here, rather than the Batman figure I ordered. And instead of sending it back for an exchange like I should have, I decided to keep him to do this review. Pro-tip: always go with your gut, kids.

The idea behind the Movie Masters line was to have taller, more fully realized sculpts of the characters from The Dark Knight movie, vs the smaller scale/regular movie line of figures and vehicles geared towards the younger crowd. Enlisting the talents of the Four Horsemen Studios to sculpt the line, the Movie Masters figures contain more detail, more articulation and a better likeness to the source material as well, namely the actors and images from the movie itself.

The packaging for the Movie Masters is different from the regular Dark Knight figures as well, and as you can see on the back of the card (above middle picture), images of the other figures from this wave (Batman, one of the Joker’s thugs, and a chase variant Batman with Bruce Wayne head). Each character comes included with a Gotham PD evidence bag (essentially a zip-lock bag), as well as various items from the movie to tie in to the storyline, the “evidence” - Joker comes with a joker playing card as you can see. The evidence gimmick is kind of nice and clever, but I’d certainly have sacrificed it for some accessories for the actual figures, but more on that later…

Joker is about 6 inches tall, and has around 17 points of articulation. The sculpted details in the clothing, the folds and ripples in the cloth, and even the look of the shoes themselves are all highly detailed and look great. It’d be nice if there was a rotation joint above the elbow to allow for more movement on the arms, but that’s not really the problem with any of the posability issues with this guy anyways.

Out of the package, and well… that’s about it. Joker doesn’t come with and can’t do much either - basically what you see is what you get. I have to say, the rubber used for these figures, aside from feeling cheap and more rubbery than rigid, puts off a very pungent and particular smell - I imagine this toy probably just took 5 years off my life from the fumes alone, yargh!

What you see for posability above is about all there is. Because of the stiff rubber tail of the jacket, Joker can’t really have his legs behind him, only sideways or forward (and even then, his upper thigh point only raises about 40 degrees or so). Not that I’d expect a character like the Joker to be able to do karate kicks, but a lack of any rotation from the waist point really hinders what this guy could do. Also, because of the soft rubber that the figure is made out of, as opposed to tougher plastics like the Marvel Legends or G.I. Joe figures use, Joker has a tendency to tip over pretty easy. I had a really hard time taking any pictures with him for this review, because other than the few bended knee variations I have here, if he’s not standing straight up, fuggedaboutit. Coupled again by the softer rubber issue, Joker’s ankle hinges aren’t sturdy enough to stabilize the figure or help offset any balance issues either, and the whole thing kinds of flops around - joints extremely loose right out of the package is what you have, and I’d bet this is the norm rather than the exception.

As for paint apps, they’re a bit of a letdown. The face paint tends to vary in quality greatly from figure to figure, some with red “lipstick” all over, and others with the eyes looking really sloppy and even cross-eyed. Further, if there’d been some kind of dark wash over the face, to highlight some of the grooves and lines, it might help the thing pop more. Mostly, the whole figure looks far too clean to me, the glossy paint and the rubber he’s made from even has a sheen to it. All the footage from the movie I’ve seen so far makes Joker look like he crawled out of a sewer, clothes in tatters, where this looks like some mens clothing catalog model. If they’d spent some time dirtying this guy up, he’d probably be far more presentable, and accurate too, as it is I feel like I’m going to have to break out the paints and brushes myself to really make this guy look good. Trust me when I say the custom Joker market on ebay is about to explode in the coming weeks with people thinking the exact same thing.

As is usual with every DC character toy I’ve bought lately, accessories are almost non-existent. Joker comes with the evidence bag and playing card as stated above, and a tiny, teensy weeny little rubber shaving razor in his left hand. In fact, in package the razor comes attached to Joker’s hand via a rubber band, which once taken off, good luck getting him to hold the blade proper much again. And since the blade is made of the same sort of cheap rubber, it bends and warps and takes on all sorts of positions other than those of a straight razor, yeah? I’m not exactly sure what accessories I’d want for him, having not seen the movie yet, but he definitely is touting around a few guns which might have been nice, and since the playing card is more in scale for me, I barely count that as an accessory for the figure at all. Maybe some more knives, or better ones? A gas-mask? Something?

All of that aside, I think the biggest problem for me comes down to - he doesn’t even really look like Heath Ledger at all. It definitely implies the movie Joker look, yet there is just something missing in the sculpt of the face. Add the cleanliness of it all, the lack of real grit and finer details, especially in the face, it looks like a toy version for a Halloween Dark Knight Joker costume, right? And where the Batman Movie Master sculpt seems to be the real focus of the line, and given the most attention and detail, the Joker just feels almost like an afterthought. Certainly not as imposing or impressive as he should be, since by all accounts Heath steals the movie with his performance (and will now forever be associated with it as well, given his passing).

In the end, I’m not that impressed, and really wish now I’d have sent this back to Toysrus for the exchange. Factoring in all of the flaws here, and assuming some of them will exist with the Batman figure too, I’m still looking forward to getting him. So maybe after I see the movie, I’ll change my tune, or at least warm up to Joker here. In the meantime, he’s going back into his package, and then into the closet, and not coming out again until after July 18th, yeah?