I’ve been hearing from lots of people that they believe that Heath Ledger should win an Oscar for his role as Joker in The Dark Knight because “you can’t see Heath Ledger in Joker”.
As great of a movie The Dark Knight is and as incredible the character of Ledger’s Joker was, I just don’t feel as though Ledger deserves an Oscar for this role.
I think that the costumes, wardrobe, and make-up people should definitely be up for and win an Oscar for The Dark Knight because they all did a tremendous job – because as everyone says, you can’t see Heath Ledger in Joker – and they all certainly helped make that possible.
The main reason why he shouldn’t win an Oscar is because there is no arc or range to his character.
This is not to say that Ledger’s portrayal of Joker as a one trick pony of sadistic loon wasn’t a good one (it was in fact an awesome portrayal) but at the end of the day that’s just all that it was – a one trick pony of sadistic loon.
If you look back at who won the Best Supporting Oscar you’ll see that all of the winning characters portrayed showed more than one side of the character personality.
For instance, no matter how bad the character of Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci in Goodfellas) was supposed to be, at the end of the day you as the viewer were able to see him as being a crazed murderer and flamboyant playboy as well as a loving son and friend – it’s called range and giving the character an arc.
Range and arc is exactly what was missing from the acting and character of Joker, and just because Ledger gave a hell of a performance full of range as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain it certainly doesn’t mean that he should get the Oscar for this much less developed character.
And if we are going to start giving away the Oscar for roles years ago, Ledger would have to get online behind John Lithgow for his role in The World According to Garp – as well countless other people.
So there you have it, as unpopular an opinion as it is, Heath Ledger should not win an Oscar for Joker.
I kind of agree. I also kind of think he only got so much press from it because he died.
well its the best actor award. not best character.
while there was no range to the joker, he was an incredibly intense character that ledger had to completely disappear into for the character to fully land with the audience…which is no small feat considering what the joker was.
Characters that are a one trick pony can be done by even the most modest of actors. Without depth an actor has zero range to work with. It’s much harder to do a wide range of acting for a single role – those actors whose characters have a bigger arc deserve to win Best Actor.