Heath Ledger got an award for the joker

[mr.pink]

Heath Ledger got an award for the joker. His performance did not merit an academy award. This is why.

• The Joker is a stock character, heath ledger's performance varied too much from the principles that define the joker. heath ledger chose not to play the joker, he chose to play a crazy clown
• The joker attacks people with unexpected weapons. Oh wow, knives are really original. COME ON! let's at least have an attempt at spreading smiles , maybe attacking with laughing gas
• The joker has white skin and green hair, not white makeup and green dye
• He has said in interveiws "I put five seconds of thought into it". the joker is one of the most complex roles that someone can hope for, he is a pathological maniac who wants to make the same people he wants to kill smile
• The only "joker" scene in the whole movie was the magic trick

If you agree/ disagree please post why. I may flesh this out to more points as questions are raised or other points come to mind

 

[Darth Shoju]

Heath Ledger got an award for the joker. His performance did not merit an academy award. This is why.

Here I thought the academy awards were about acting and filmmaking, not being faithful to comic book characters.

The Joker is a stock character, heath ledger's performance varied too much from the principles that define the joker. heath ledger chose not to play the joker, he chose to play a crazy clown

Okay. What are the principles that define the Joker, and how did he stray from them in his performance?

The joker attacks people with unexpected weapons. Oh wow, knives are really original. COME ON! let's at least have an attempt at spreading smiles , maybe attacking with laughing gas

I don't think the smiling fish guns and giant mallets would fit the motif of Chris Nolan's Batman movies. Regardless, this has nothing to do with Heath Ledger's performance and everything to do with Nolan's decisions in making the movie. Since this thread is about Heath's performance as the Joker, I don't see how this point is relevant.

The joker has white skin and green hair, not white makeup and green dye

Again, I fail to see how this is part of Heath's performance and not a decision of Chris Nolan and his makeup artists. Either way, it seems like six of one, half a dozen of the other to me.

He has said in interveiws "I put five seconds of thought into it". the joker is one of the most complex roles that someone can hope for, he is a pathological maniac who wants to make the same people he wants to kill smile

Do you have a source on that? Because everything I've seen has indicated he put much more thought into it than that. He spent time studying how ventriloquists make their dummies talk so he could incorporate that into his performance, for example.

The only "joker" scene in the whole movie was the magic trick

Why is he more the Joker in this scene than the others? How are they different?

 

[Steel_Wind]

*licks his lips nervously, with a nervous tic*

*slams a pencil into the table, driving it down into the wood*

*grabs mr.pink*

*does to mr.pink what he is obviously daring the posters here to do*

"It's magic."

____________________________

If you can pull that scene off and then move your head on your shoulders just so - and with a hint of menacing lunacy to it, all while making a billion dollars at the box office and dying while the film is in post-production, they might give you an Oscar too.

It was a brilliant performance. Period.

 

[Merlin's Shadow]

If you agree/ disagree please post why. I may flesh this out to more points as questions are raised or other points come to mind

This is going to boil down to a matter of taste. It's obvious that your mind is pretty well made up on this matter. And you know what? That's okay. There are many things that some people like while others do not. Many people thought Ledger's turn as the Joker was incredible. Others, such as yourself, felt differently.

I'm not sure there can be much of a discussion beyond that because the tone of your post seems to indicate that you are looking more for points to rebut than to have an honest discussion.

 

[Krug]

Why so serious?

 

[Mouseferatu]

And of course, this is ignoring the fact that the "wackier" interpretation of the Joker, though the most common one these days, is neither the only one nor even the first one. In his earliest appearances, the Joker was a homicidal criminal, yes, but he lacked most of the peculiar gimmicks they added to him later. As an interpretation of that Joker, Ledger's performance and Nolan's script and direction were pretty much spot-on.

Saying that there's only one "real" way to portray the Joker is as silly as saying there's only one "real" way to portray Batman, or James Bond, or any other longstanding character.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Heath Ledger got an award for the joker. His performance did not merit an academy award. This is why.

• The Joker is a stock character, heath ledger's performance varied too much from the principles that define the joker. heath ledger chose not to play the joker, he chose to play a crazy clown
• The joker attacks people with unexpected weapons. Oh wow, knives are really original. COME ON! let's at least have an attempt at spreading smiles , maybe attacking with laughing gas
• The joker has white skin and green hair, not white makeup and green dye
• He has said in interveiws "I put five seconds of thought into it". the joker is one of the most complex roles that someone can hope for, he is a pathological maniac who wants to make the same people he wants to kill smile
• The only "joker" scene in the whole movie was the magic trick

If you agree/ disagree please post why. I may flesh this out to more points as questions are raised or other points come to mind

Nothing of these points matter.

He is not awarded for being true to a comic book character or getting a decent makeup artist or using creative weapons.

He is awarded for the quality of his performance. Quality as in intensity, believability. His performance draws you in. You're not looking at Heath Ledger in funny (or gross) make-up, but at an criminally insane sociopath and anarchist. You believe that this guy could and would challenge an entire city including its "Hero", that he would be willing to destroy hundreds or thousands of life. That he has no respect for anyone ones life, including his own. That he does all this to make an (insane) point.

 

[Merkuri]

I'm a believer that when you watch a movie or read a book you should try to evaluate it in isolation. It is its own work of art, even if it is inspired by something else.

Chris Nolan's Batman movies take the comic books and cartoons and earlier movies and make them into something completely new. I recall reading that Nolan was making an effort to make these movies as realistic as possible. He tries to use existing technology to explain away Batman, and when the technology doesn't exist he uses logical new techs. These have their own problems (you mean you want to be able to turn your neck? you won't be invulnerable, but okay).

If you look at it in isolation, Ledger's character in this movie was an amazing character. He was a frightening sociopath, a madman who was arguably a genius in his madness. He was a force of nature, unpredictable and destructive. As I've heard people say on these boards before, Ledger's character was chaotic evil taken to its extreme. "Some people just want to watch the world burn."

The fact that his character is named and modeled after a character in a comic book doesn't make his performance any less inspiring. I am deeply sad that Ledger cannot come back to the series and play the Joker again in later movies. I want to see more of the character, but fear that no other actor will be able to live up to this performance.

 

[Thanee]

This is why...

...you didn't like his performance as the Joker. That's fine. To each his own.

But it has absolutely no bearing on whether or not he deserved the academy award.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Brown Jenkin]

In order to say whether he deserved it or not you have to look at the other nominees for comparison and then factor politics in as well.

James Brolin - Milk
Robert Downey jr. - Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

The Accademy seems to prefer roles that do more than just have people play them well, they like roles that either stretch acting far or go agaist the grain. Whether it is right or not they will also look at who has recenntly won, or if they have been unrewarded too long for thier entirety of work. With those in mind this is what I saw.

James Brolin & Micheal Shannon - Fine jobs but they don't strech ones acting abilities. They were never really in contention.

Robert Downey Jr. - The role was one that the Academy might want to give an award for as it is very different, but it was attached to a type of movie that has little respect from the Academy. This was a longshot at best.

Philip Seymour Hoffman - A period piece which give it extra credit and subject matter that is controverial helps. Hoffman did a wonderful job in making things ambigious and did a wonderful acting job. On the down side he already has a Oscar for Best Actor in 2005. Hoffman was probably the only other possible contender.

Heath Ledger - Hollywood loves people playing socialpaths or people with other mental problems so that helps greatly. The type of picture probably hurt somewhat but not greatly given the other factors. If it wasn't for Ledgers death it would have been a close one between Ledger and Hoffman. But Ledger did die, and the Academy saw this as its last chance to honor Ledger. Ledger had been nominated once before for Brokeback Mountain, which is just the sort of movie the Academy loves, but came up short. Since there would be no chance to honor him in the future this was probably the tiebreaker that put him over the top.