Heath Ledger as the Joker in the next Batman

[sarah]

was in the trades confirmed yesterday.

What does everyone think?!? I can't make any sort of judgment, given Christian Bale and Heath in the same movie, directed by Christopher Nolan. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.......yummy!

[~Em]

Hmm... I have to agree with you on the yummy bit, but in terms of acting, well...Christian Bale's pretty dang good, but I'm not sure that Heath has necessarily made the best choices with his career in terms of roles up to this point, so I'm not really sure how good of an actor he really is. If he does a good job, this role could really improve the quality of the roles he gets in the future. However, if he doesn't, it could bring down the movie a bit, which would be sad.

[Lord of Insufficient Light]

Okay, putting aside the issues of the tastyness of the actors involved (seriously, the cannibalistic overtones are coming on strong on this one, gals), I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude on this one. Nolan's devotion to avoiding the cheese-factor makes me think that he'll be able to put something out that casual fans and died-in-the-wool DC afficianados can get behind. After all, he managed to actually make the Scarecrow scarey. The key is to make the movie actually about Batman, rather than his adversaries.
In a related note, the title of the film has been announced as The Dark Knight. I'm excited. Nolan seems to know how to get good performances out of his actors, and he also knows how to write a good story with interesting characters.

[bryanb]

I'm going to withhold judgement until I hear some more news. I'm excited that the title of the movie is "The Dark Night"!

[sarah]

Yeah, that's how I really feel, too. And Bale has been a great Batman, and even more important, a great Bruce Wayne. You can really see the split on the two sides of that character.

[Lord of Insufficient Light]

Only a mild quibble on this one, but unlike other superheroes, the civilian identity (Bruce Wayne) is really just a mask. He was always Batman, and Bruce Wayne was just a mask for that. Superman, on the other hand, is always Clark Kent, regardless of his costume. Consider that Bruce Wayne has completely different moral instincts from Batman, whereas Clark Kent and Superman share the exact same values. Superman is just Clark Kent dressed up in blue tights so that he won't be bothered in his daily life. Christian Bale's brilliance as Batman/Bruce Wayne was capturing the fact that Bruce Wayne was really just a cover, and played up the artifice of that aspect.

[sarah]

A very interesting point, and one that I had never thought of. Nice.