Time to get roasted...

Look, Heath was mighty fine, but maybe the deal is that the JOKER is an incredibly great villain who would have lent any talented movie actor a canvas upon which to write large.

I'm reminded of the kudos for handsome Johnny Depp when he revealed he could be a quirky Edward Scissorhands, a funny Ed Wood, and, ultimately, a totally radical Captain John Sparrow (Oscar nommed the first time, he was found "same old, same old" by parts two and three.) Not to mention the bizarre face and voice Depp invented for Willy Wonka. Or the British vibe he brought to crazy old Sweeney Todd (who, like the Joker, likes a good, sharp, blade.)

Depp would have been a helluva Joker EXCEPT that jaded critics likely would have said "its Depp acting crazy again." Familiarity breeds contempt.

Daniel Day Lewis would have been a great Joker. He could have used his "There Will Be Blood" voice or his villainous attitude from "Gangs of New York" ("Bill the Butcher"...another man who liked a sharp blade.)

Phillip Seymour Hoffmann is all the rage right now. His Joker would have been Nicholsonesque in both stoutness and deep voice....but likely the critics would have raved. (And they'll get another chance: he's rumored as First Choice for the Penguin.)

Sean Penn was evidently under serious consideration by Christopher Nolan to play the Joker, and he's demonstrably GREAT....methinks he would have borrowed his mannerisms from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "The Falcon and the Snowman" or "Carlito's Way"(which reminds me: Pacino would be a fine Joker, if it weren't for his overexposure and age today.) Nolan had used the not-quite-a-star Guy Pearce in "Memento"; Pearce would have been a fine Joker, if the least starry choice available.

Or how about Robert Downey Jr. as the Joker? He has a certain stylish and manic quality...and drugs almost got him, too.

And why not Brad Pitt? He's shown a taste for Oscarish madness in "Twelve Monkeys" and as the psycho in "Kalifornia."

My point: the Joker is a great role, a helluva role, an open invitation to ANY actor with any sort of chops to ham it up and go to town with vocals, make-up and gestures.

Heath Ledger WAS great as the Joker. His voice alone was inspired: according to the critics, it may have been Al Franken, Richard Dreyfuss, Jack Lemmon, the Church Lady or any combination of the above.

But Nolan's Joker also got GREAT LINES. And great speeches. And great scenes: wouldn't any actor playing the Joker have shocked us into laughs with the "lethal pencil trick"?

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Simply put: let's get that Oscar bid for Heath going (Nicholson was rumored but his $60 million payday seemed reward enough.) And his early end WAS tragic.

But the Joker's a great villain, written well in this film, and I daresay that Depp, Lewis, Hoffman, Penn, Downey, Pitt, Pearce, and about 12 other guys would have gone to town with him as well.

As Hitchcock said, "the better the villain, the better the picture."

The Joker's a better villain.

P.S. Or how about that guy Javier Bardem, who played the coin-flipping killer in "No Country for Old Men"? And hey, didn't Two-Face START that gimmick, anyway?

. . . but if we follow that to its logical conclusion, there's not really any point praising a unique reading of Coriolanus, Macbeth, or Richard III. Putting breaks on praise for a performance because the role was juicy, the stakes were high, and the writing was sharp seems to emerge from a fundamental misunderstanding of what an actor does. A great role is both easier and harder to play than a mediocre one; easier because we don't have to generate all interest ourselves, harder because we want to live up to the "crown" that's been handed to us.

Crispin Glover would actually have been my first choice for the Joker. The others you name woulda been good, though Hoffman would have been miscast (he's a much more interesting choice for Penguin). Bardem would have been all wrong for different reasons, but he, too, could have pulled it off.

You name Pitt at one point, which is an interesting call, if only by virtue of his Tyler Durden in Fight Club (a film, and a role, for which I have a genuinely unhealthy affinity). It doesn't make visual sense in my mind . . . but then, neither did Ledger, back when I was first hoping for Glover.

The real fundamental flaw in thinking here is that Ledger was given a polished script, role and costume to step into, and that the creative staff had a clear vision for the Joker. From everything I have read about Ledger's preparation for this role, it was Ledger himself who reinvented the character from the gimmicky camp of Jokers past to a completely original, nuanced and ultimately terrifying madman. This is a character we've seen before in name only. There is otherwise no blueprint in any incarnation of the comic book for the performance that Ledger delivers in this film--one of true madness, hopelessness and self-destruction, certainly magnified by audience speculation as to whether this is a case of life inspiring art...or vice versa.

I guess my issue is with the belief that somehow Heath Ledger did something so monumental with the Joker that no one else could have come close. I've not seen much of Ledger's work, but I am certainly impressed enough simply by the comparison of his Brokeback Mountain guy and his Joker. Entirely different voices, movements, attitudes, etc. Still, I think those other guys would have handled the role just fine, if differently. Ledger's death changes everything, and I offer as weird a comparison as you're likely to find: In 1951, Alfred Hitchcock made a movie called "Strangers on A Train," about a nice young man (Farley Granger) stalked and menaced by a mad young man (Robert Walker) who proves to be the nice young man's "crazed doppelganger." Robert Walker at the time was a player of light romantic comedy, with a boyish voice and manner. Hitchcock cast Walker "against type," and Walker gave an incredible performance, with a certain fey cracked flamboyance that was literally decades ahead of his time. (I'd say there is a fair amount of the Joker in the funny-yet-crazy madness of Walker's Bruno Anthony, and the Joker is a doppelganger, too.) But boyish Robert Walker had problems off screen. A mental breakdown. Failed marriages. Alcoholism. And barely a year after "Strangers on a Train" came out, Robert Walker died of a drug overdose in his early thirties, leaving his madman behind in "Strangers on a Train" as, literally, the performance of his life. It is still well regarded, today. Warner Brothers has a remake script for "Strangers on a Train" ready to go, and has been trying to make it for years. A few years ago, they announced who they wanted for the Robert Walker role: Heath Ledger.

There's no way of knowing what people would have felt about Ledger's portrayal of the Joker had he not died. There really isn't a reason to speculate- there's no way to tell. All we do know is that his performance is

- different from any role he had played before, and

- different from all past Jokers.

It should be accepted for what it is and not made less of by armchair critics. You either liked it or you didn't.

As far as Ledger's death is concerned, in relation to the part, there's really nothing to be said unless you knew him personally.

I liked it. Very much. As with the Nicholson version, the Joker simply took over the movie. It only truly comes to life when Ledger is on screen, doing his very amusing/scary thing.

As for his death, its true: it should only matter to those who knew him.

Still, after some thought, I've come to believe that living today with what happened with Heath Leddger this is what it was like to live with what happened when Robert Walker played a wildly influential psycho villain for Hitchcock back in 1951 with "Strangers on a Train": we lost the actor just after he gave his greatest performance. Life and career stopped together at a moment of indelible greatness.

(James Dean was rather different: he did only three movies in a group, all of them great, and promptly died in a car crash. Ledger and Walker made many movies before their great final performances and deaths.)

I guess my issue is with the belief that somehow Heath Ledger did something so monumental with the Joker that no one else could have come close.

Well, sure. I can see that. But that's true of any performance one would praise in such terms; there are are many performances that I can no longer imagine anyone doing, but that doesn't mean that someone else couldn't have, to equally incredible effect.

I think what's interesting--and I'm seeing the film on Saturday, so I'm speaking only to the social and critical phenomenon of his performance, not the performance itself--is that the performance (enhanced or not by the fact of Ledger's death) is drawing such rabidly subjective reactions that people are moved to such hyperbole. All such praise is hyperbole. We actors are craftsmen, artisans; we like to pretend we're gods at the opening night parties, but the next-day hangovers are pretty punishing, and it reminds us that we're doing a job, a job that we might have been uniquely suited to do at that time, at that place, but that can and will be done by someone else in, perhaps, a not too distant future.

As with the Nicholson version, the Joker simply took over the movie. It only truly comes to life when Ledger is on screen, doing his very amusing/scary thing.

I'm wondering if your praise here is also unfair in a similar vein. Again, I haven't seen The Dark Knight, but I did see Burton's Batman and Nolan's Batman Begins, so I'm extrapolating from what I know of Joker/Batman dynamics and Bale's take on Wayne/Batman.

I should say, first of all, that Bale was my favorite Wayne/Batman, though I did love Keaton (far more than Kilmer or [ugh] Clooney [not because I don't like Clooney--because I do--but because I HATED Clooney as Batman, though that was probably more Schumacher's fault than his]). So I suspect what's happening here is that the Joker is, as you say, such a juicy, epic role that the character tends to bring the movie to an avaricious sort of life, while Wayne/Batman's glum stoicism is only of particular interest to people (like me) who relate very easily to glum stoicism.

I think, also, there's a broader archetypal sympathetic response, wherein the villain excites us more because he is less like us. Oh, sure, heroism and villainy are two sides of the same coin, and most of us bourgeois moviegoers are unlikely to participate actively in either, but I think most of us imagine that our daily struggles are heroic in some small way, that they represent some sort of struggle to be good, to do well by our families and communities, to leave the world in better condition than we found it. So the hero is somewhat we can admire, to whom we aspire, but the villain is someone who abandons the tasks to which we have set ourselves in the interest of pursuing something pure, fierce. We admire the hero, but we envy the villain, which gives him a special kind of power.

. . . if you've seen this. I'm just curious as to your take.

I'm sorry, I didn't see these post replies before now. And I can't access that link.

However, I can say that your points are all well-taken,thelyamhound. Particularly with your actor's expertise.

Since way back with that "campy" TV series in the 60's, the Batman franchises have rather heavily sold the "special guest villains" over Batman himself. This got rather out of control with the Schumacher films, despite the casting of estimable guys like Val Kilmer and George Clooney (early in his career, and wrongly) as Batman. Jim Carrey took over "Batman Forever" and Arnold Schwarzenegger (still clinging to a soon-to-be-out-of-date superstar entitlement) took top billing and story control over "Batman and Robin" (the villainous Mr. Freeze turned good at the end, for Arnold wasn't doing pure villainy anymore.)

As I've posted here elsewhere, Chris Nolan honored the "Batman" purists by focussing "Batman Begins" on Bruce Wayne himself, with fairly negligble and dull villains, but did so (we have seen) at the expense of the few hundred additional million you get when you use the Joker as your villain (and Batman fades away yet again in comparison.)

Warner Brothers now faces a conundrum:

It is entirely possible that the key to the most profitable Batman films is to ALWAYS use the Joker as the bad guy.

The movie with Nicholson's Joker was the highest grosser of the first series of four; Warners figured it had to match Jack's Sole Joker with Tag Team villains in all of the next three movies (Catwoman/Penguin; Riddler/TwoFace; Mr. Freeze/Poison Ivy.)

If they can't bring back the Joker, Warners is probably looking at having lower box office with the next Chris Nolan "Batman" movie.

Had Heath Ledger survived (the cold-hearted businessman in me is saying), surely Warners would have booked him to do the Joker again, and soon (maybe with another guest villain, as TwoFace was this time.)

Now Warners (and Nolan) will be doing the math and wondering if it is time to try yet ANOTHER actor as the Joker next time (I've offered lots of possibilities in my posts), and maybe make another $400 million. Or go with the Penguin, and make maybe only $200 million.

Or has the Joker died with Heath?

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Me, I've always liked Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne the best. Keaton came to the film despised by the fans(a spindly COMEDIAN), but he had just played the Jokeresque "Beetlejuice" for Tim Burton and thus gave us a Batman with a certain eccentricity and nutzo edge to begin with (and the "black plastic muscle suit" solved the physique problem nicely.)

Also, Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson had great duelling eyebrows.