Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

no, its just... they werent brothers

gonna tell everyone i meet today they were

fucked up thing about 10 tens i hate about you was julia stiles' character was the ledger character's sister

10 tens lol

http://beerslugger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/epps-300x152.jpg

l-r: Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

no, heath ledger didnt have any siblings in 10 things i hate about you

yes, I saw "GI Joe", in the THEATER

oh Dan

It was better than "Terminator: Salvation" </ringingendorsement>

Also the Joker wasn't skinny enough. He needs to be wearing drainpipe trousers and an impossibly tight jacket. Wiry people are inherently untrustworthy. Beefy dudes are honest. When Ledger leaned out of the window of the cop car and shook his hair and salivated on his prosthetic muzzle a little I was struck by his brawny biceps. No way the Joker works out. No fucking way.

This is basically the Riddler in Alan Moore's Killing Joke, right? In that incarnation he's a scrawny crippled gangster with a shock of red hair - and I think it works great.

Yeah I'm curious about why D4n thinks the Nolan/Ledger Joker is true to Joker-dom. I always thought the Joker was a big dandy. Permagrin, wild sharp suits. Ledger plays him as a bedraggled muttering tramp. I'd have thought the Joker would be too proud for that, too invested in his flashiness and showmanship.

he was more bedraggled than usual but the thing Ledger really went for that no one aside from Mark Hamill in the animated series had really done is play up the straight-up anarchy streak that informs the Joker's actions

Batman is an insane dude who is all about order, law and protecting the weak.

The Joker is an insane dude who is all about disorder, chaos and preying on others.

I thought the film went to great lengths to play up these extremes, including having Batman be the more tailored, pristine-appearing figure (as that fits his psyche profile) and the Joker looking more bedraggled and less put-together (as that fits his). And at any rate, you weren't criticizing his appearance, you were criticizing his craziness, which is the defining characteristic of the character and has been since his debut in 1940 but has especially been built up over the past 25 years.

No that's right and yes, the contrasts couldn't have been clearer. (Although it might have been more interesting to have both Batman and the Joker be pristine dandies.)

But I wasn't criticizing his craziness at all Dan! I was criticizing that particular, shopworn craziness of the schizo light-switch flip between tra-la-la wacky and totally-fucking-scary and back again. There are so many other kinds of crazy. Like Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. I'm not saying that would work for the Joker, but there's something infinitely creepier to me about an unflappable maniac. Like when the Wall Street Journal editorial page calmly articulates why it's in the national interest to convert all illegal immigrants into biofuels or whatever.

Or another kind of crazy: Pentecostal preachers who speak in tongues. That would actually be a great villain. The Preacher.

But yeah, I guess you're saying that the Ledger/Nolan brand of twitchy schizo lightswitch crazy is the way the Joker is in the comic books? I guess I just didn't like the result.

But I wasn't criticizing his craziness at all Dan! I was criticizing that particular, shopworn craziness of the schizo light-switch flip between tra-la-la wacky and totally-fucking-scary and back again.

...which, as I said earlier, has been the Joker's archetype for SEVENTY YEARS (61 if you are excluding the whimsical Silver Age iteration that is basically the TV show character)

I'm not just saying "that's how he was in the comics"; I'm saying "it is very very likely that this character is responsible for making that type of crazy so prevalent in modern storytelling". I can't prove he's the progenitor and I assume similar characters predate him, but in terms of modern storytelling and where people draw character inspiration from, you likely can draw the inspiration for an absurd number (like, maybe 90%) to the Joker.

it's also important to note that the joker was a scary-ass "light-switch" psycho from the very beginning of the comics in the '40s. he only really developed into the pastel-wearing wacky-go-lucky prankster because shit had to be softened during the '50s and '60s. he started to get hardcore again as '70s comics became more permissive, and then everything kinda went to hell (from tracer's pov anyway) in the '80s with the dark knight returns/death in the family/killing joke trifecta.

haha xpost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_%28comics%29

I mean, just read through this. Dude has been like this for decades.

I just wanna say GI Joe would have been awesome awesome awesome if it wasn't for Marlon Wayans and Joseph Gordon Levitt being too chicken to use the actual Cobra Commander voice

you will never be the new heath ledger with that kind of cowardice, JGL

Haha Jesus. Bury em in paperwork. I suspect you're right that the Joker himself is, in a tautological kind of way, responsible for the ubiquity of the exact twitchy psychopath-by-numbers performance that chafed my vagina so much in Dark Knight. How Jokerish of him.

One thing I really did like was how the Joker kept commandeering everyone's televisions, like in the TV show. That was awesome. "This... is the Joker!" "Whaaa?!"

i really need to watch more twitchy psychopath-by-numbers movies

if anything I feel I've seen too much cool, collected Hannibal Lecter/Jigsaw shit of late

ha the first thing that popped to mind when reading the phrase "twitchy psychopath-by-numbers" was "Muriel's Wedding"

a body count is exactly what that movie needed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9OQsAWE3Eg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unw5gZj5OS8

Or another kind of crazy: Pentecostal preachers who speak in tongues. That would actually be a great villain. The Preacher.

see, e.g., robert deniro, cape fear.

ha that reminds me that I meant to mention this earlier:

http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/graphicnovels/img/preacher1.jpg

(not a villain, though)

Can the Joker kill Garth Ennis?

im with croups. so few movies go far genuinely showy bad guy performances any more. it's all freakin timothy olyphant (who i generally like) frowning his way thru die hard 4

like im straining ot think of anything vaguely recent with a big bad guy who is actually kinda big and wacky and not just a 4th-generation creepy hannibal lecter knockoff (you'd really prefer another variation on THAT cliche tracer??)

ledger was awesome, so fun to watch, so unpredictable

yes

timothy olyphant and his sidekicks were a steep drop from alan rickman and his posse of awesome eurotrash (all of whom kind of memorable even if they were only onscreen for a couple minutes apiece.)

ledger was awesome, so fun to watch, so unpredictable

― real s1ock (s1ocki), Tuesday, 31 August 2010 17:47 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i double-take every time this happens

every time... what... happens?

someone brings up Ledger, which I am assuming based on username is his name

ledger was awesome, so fun to watch, so unpredictable

I've got nothing against showiness, FWIW, but I did think it was incredibly predictable.

Not sure what you mean about Hannibal Lecter rip-offs. IIRC Hopkins was basically just a kind of oleaginous, exaggeratedly polite dude with a weakness for human flesh.

I think what bothered me about Ledger was that it's like OK, yes, good job acting "maniacal" but what's at stake? What does he want? Why does it matter if he gets it? I don't want the answers from the script, I want them from the give-and-take in a scene. Ledger/Nolan's Joker was in his own little world the whole time. Maybe you'll say yes, that's who the Joker is, he's in his own little world. Well, OK, but that leads to some pretty static, one-note perfs.

i don't know. i'm not sure i care very much about his motives, in the context of superhero movies (in other kinds of movies, i care a lot). in part it's because i'm not much of a fan of superhero films, but -- in particular -- i've been really bored by the "origin stories." it's one of the reasons that, in this genre of films, the second movie is often better than the first (it isn't bogged-down in the characters' origins and/or motivations).

Dramateacher Hand

it becomes clear over the film that the joker just wants everything to burn - that he just gets off on the chaos and perversion of it all

i mean, it's so clear that it's even in the dialogue

i mean the whole point was to play off the "who is he REALLY" thing and show it up as being kind of useless - i thought that was cool

Not sure what you mean about Hannibal Lecter rip-offs. IIRC Hopkins was basically just a kind of oleaginous, exaggeratedly polite dude with a weakness for human flesh.

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, August 31, 2010 2:40 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

see some more bad serial killer movies. they're all freakin' polite and mannered now

or at least were for 10+ years after silence o the lambs

I think what bothered me about Ledger was that it's like OK, yes, good job acting "maniacal" but what's at stake? What does he want?

as s1 says, that's just the point. he doesn't give a shit at all. for him, nothing is at stake. you can make the case that that's not necessarily good drama, but it's not because of the performance.

hoping next movie is batman v. angry human centipede.

would allow them to acknowledge a lot of minor entries in the rogue's gallery, something i wish more superhero films would do in a montage or something

Argh, no. Dick Tracy did this and it was a terrible misuse of characters.

Yeah I don't know why Heath Ledger didn't consult me before taking on this role. LEARN FROM THE BEST, DUDE.

Anyway this is distracting from the real tragedy of Dark Knight, which is that Gary Oldman's mustache was scandalously unmentioned in the credits.

Ledger's performance is natural, haunted, tragic. I don't really care for the movie that much when he's not on screen, but it's easily one of my 10 favorite performances ever. Reminds me of Brando in Last Tango in Paris.

ok, to be more precise, I barely tolerate the movie when he's not on screen.