Quote:
|
Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
Its funny how opposite our perspective is
. I feel like its Nicholson who danced around ledger. You're right that he created an epic character BUTto ME that kind of sociopathic violence WAS NOT THE JOKER.in a way ledger created HIS OWN character but IVE always thought of the joker as being precisely the kind of campy but edgy performance we got from Nicholson. Are you familiar with the Joker from Batman the Animated aSeries? I think THAT is the epitome of Joker, dark, twisted, but sincerely funny.
I want to know what demonrail thinks.
|
Yeah, demonrail's always good for this kind of discussion.
To be fair, you're right that the joker has been the campy, pompadoured, acid-squirting-flower holding, high-shouldered-blazer-wearing, fedora sporting gag villain in the past. But he became less riotous, less slapstick, less comic in the late '70s and early '80s.
By the time Death In the Family came around, Joker was a ruthless killer. The "schemes" and elaborate stunts of the gold & silver age started to appear less and less often, and when they did, they started to serve more as distractions to throw Batman & Gordon off, so he could complete some true objective that was far less theatrical and far more insidious. Like, I don't know, shooting Barbara Gordon in the spine and crippling her for life, or beating Jason Todd to (semi)death with a fucking crow bar.
Admittedly, this had more to do with the edgier writing Alan Moore and Frank Miller brought to the table (along with the escalation in comic book violence brought on by the emergence of competitors like Image and Valiant) than it did with Bob Kane and his original character design. But still, by the time Nolan took the helm of the cinematic world of Batman, the Joker was pretty much exactly what Nolan and Ledger showed us.
Now the comic books seem to steal a bit from the films in that regard. Check out Grant Morrison's "The Joker," a story that was honestly almost too dark for its own good. Told by an acquaintance and brief "friend" of the Joker's, an impressionable ex-con who idolized him and wanted a position pf power in Joker's gang, it took everything down to the make-up and costume from Ledger's version, and told a truly fucked up story of a crime lord who walks the streets like junkie, and simply never stops unleashing bloody fucking hell on everyone around him, friend or foe.
I think Nicholson's Joker came around early enough that it still matched up pretty solidly with the where the character was on an evolutionary level, so for 1989 maybe Nicholson's performance worked. I don't think the fist Batman would have been nearly as successful if it featured a Ledger-esque portrayal of the clown prince of crime. The movie probably would have been slapped with an R-Rating, and it may have done damage to the franchise.
But if Nicholson's version had been used in 2008, nobody would have spent hours waiting in line to see the movie, and it would have been a campy tame weak mess compared to Batman Begins.
So maybe we're both right. We probably are. But regarding which actor delivered a better performance? ... Come on, SFAD. Nicholson just acted like Nicholson. He did an ok job of being Jack Nicholson-as-the-Joker.
Ledger scared the hell out of people. He brought something to the role that he'd never even hinted at in any of his previous performances. He wasn't doing "Ledger-doing-the-Joker," he was doing "the Joker," period. There's no hint of Ned Kelly or whatever-his-name-was in Brokeback. It was like Heath Ledger wasn't even present.
In a straight battle of acting chops, Ledger wins hands down.
Of course, Nolan's films had the benefit of time, money, and a cultural revival of graphic literature in their corner. Tim Burton did fine for the time, but if anything from his movies stands out, I swear, it's DeVito's Penguin.