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The Joker Begins

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Johnny C:

--- Quote from: 0bsessions on 23 May 2007, 10:28 ---In response to Johnny, remember, you're dealing with Wikipedia here, which tends to be unreliable on occasion. You actually would've saved yourself a question if you'd checked the listed source:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=90305&highlight=Heath+Ledger

--- End quote ---
I did click that link but being a web forum it had the courtesy of being down. Having read it now and a bunch of the follow-up statements I can agree with the people who feel he's clearly taken the role because he's an actor first and foremost rather than a comic book fan.

Considering the garbage that has been done to the Joker over the years if Ledger only winds up having read The Killing Joke before filming that'd honestly be fine with me - and as you can read from that interview it was still incredibly early into the production. Keep in mind that the first answer he gives mentions trying to extend his holiday time and I'm a little more forgiving about not having gone through The Killing Joke. Honestly, reading a graphic novel is just a relaxation thing for us but at the moment it's work for him.

(And before I hear any arguments about acting being easy or the money he's getting or anything about that I'll just cut you off at the pass and tell you that as a future teacher I'm going to have approximately zero holiday time during the year as I'm going to wind up constantly reading material about my chosen field and that if I actually manage to take a holiday and someone snarks at me for not reading the latest journal article about kids and English literature I will probably attempt to do a backflip off of your face. Let me enjoy my vacation and let Ledger enjoy his.)

I can think of five or six story arcs which would wind up with our silly clown back in action again as opposed to someone whose limited experience with the character is his at his most random and psychotic. That he's seen Nicholson's Batman is a bit worrying but I have faith that Nolan will be able to direct that part of the interpretation into oblivion. That Ledger is going to have only two preconceived notions of the character and one is clearly what the director - who, by the way, is neither Bryan Singer nor Brett Ratner - is wanting from him is going to make him a lot easier to direct.

Also, feel free to be less selective about Ledger's filmography. He was a pretty important character in a movie a couple of years back that got nominated for a bunch of awards. The name escapes me at the moment, but boy was there a flurry over the scene where him and another dude go for broke and make the beast with two backs. I guess what I'm saying is he's been in a lot of chaff but he's also been involved in some pretty great films over the years, just like a surprising amount of actors, including Liam Neeson. I mean, The Haunting? Next Of Kin? Krull? Absurdly bad pictures, but because Neeson once played a dude who didn't like what was happening in concentration camps people seem willing to forgive his career missteps.

TheBoredOne:
JohnnyC, are you suggesting that we not judge actors based on the low points in their careers?

Johnny C:
No, it's perfectly fair to judge, say, Robert De Niro on Meet The Fockers and Analyze That, as long as you remember that he also did Raging Bull.

Spinless:
I have this philsophy as an artist that I've tried to apply to every other thing in life.
I know that I'm only as good as my last drawing.
My last drawing SUCKED. I've never really tried drawing a chocolate coloured girl before.

So, a band is as good as it's last album, an actor is only as good as his last film, etc.

It's all debatable, but I also think it's fair. People are constantly changing all of the time. Judge them based on the last thing they did. Before you excuse them, they have to convince you it was just a cock up.

thehoopiestfrood:
Strangely enough I never found the casting of Cillian Murphy and Liam Neeson strange at all. I actually said "Liam Neeson must be Ra's" because he looks EXACTLY like the Ra's of the comics to me in the publicity shots. I thought it was a running joke in the comics/animated series/whatever that while he has an Arabic name he looks European. It just made perfect sense to me, I was much more confused by the cast listing thing saying Ken Watanabe was Ra's. But when I saw photos of the filming, as I said, it seemed to pretty easy to figure out what was going on, just because Liam Neeson looked so right. I was much more annoyed in the filming that they mispronounced "Ra's" the entire film. That really got on my nerves, I don't understand that at all. I thought Cillian Murphy was great as Scarecrow and I never really questioned his casting before the film, I don't know why.

That photo of the Joker also doesn't show that he has reasonably long hair. But it's quite difficult to see exactly how long and what he really looks like because they are shitty paparazzi shots that I've seen but a lot of people were going mental saying "OMG long hair" but I don't think you can really tell how long it is.

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