Considering how well it did in theaters you're not exactly wrong. Despite the dissonance, the movie made twice back its budget, which is even higher when you count in inflation.
Take the overall movie as you see fit, but there's no denying Ledger pulled of a genuinely disturbing and unpredictable Joker befitting the tone of the Dark Knight trilogy. My favorite story from the filming is the interaction between Heath Ledger and Maggie Gyllenhaal at Bruce Wayne's benefit party for Harvey Dent. Gyllenhaal's reaction was genuine as it was the first time she'd seen Ledger in full costume and character, and she was genuinely frightened. When an actor convinces another actor of their character and elicits real emotional responses, you done good.
I remember during the early YT days, there were all these TDK "is not as good or sucks" videos that came out of wood work 2 weeks later. Most of them were shit, and they could not back up there arguments or kept "finding plot holes".
Here's the thing about plot holes: I challenge anyone to name a movie without them. You can delve into the most niggling details of basically any move and find something unrealistic or that doesn't make literal sense. People who comb through cinematic works simply to find the inconsistencies and "plot holes" are the biggest downers, but it somehow makes them feel superior, like they're in on something the blind masses are not. If that's why anyone watches movies, for that meaningless bit of pride, so be it; they're certainly going to be the life of ZERO parties.
Because the simple fact is that Arnold is not an ACTOR. He's an entertainer. His acting skills are horrible, and almost non-existent. He isn't hired because of his emotional range and his ability to act his heart out, in a way that will leave the audiences weeping for generations. He is hired because he's a steroided out meatslab, that makes women (and some dudes too) get wet, and dudes wish they were him getting the women wet. He looks good when they slather him, shirtless, in oil, and give him a big penis, sorry gun, to point at people, while pyrotechnics go off in the background. He has a baseline charisma to him, that is like the epoxy glue of his personality, that helps carry his sub-par acting to massive monetary success.
A distinction I've made about music on multiple occasions; artists and entertainers are completely different animals, the former being far more respectable at their craft.
This mentality still has not died down when comes to the Nolan Batman films, except it's slightly changed in the other directions. The ones who started it with TDK, their channel either died down, shut down, quit, or and in one case, unfortunately died. While most people like Rises, it's critics on the Internet: Movie Bob, Honest Trailers, Cinema Sins, RLM, and Channel Awesome (before the collapse)/Doug Walker who calls any one who likes the third movie idiots, mindless "fan-boys/girls" or sheep(ple), etc. Like any of them have the right to talk. The movie is flawed, but if you call it bad movie or one of the worst films of all time, then clearly you have not seen a lot of bad ones out there. They can all fuck off, but especially Channel Awesome as a whole CS, and MB.
I disagree. While he is an entertainer (and that is how he sees himself), I consider him a good actor, Not the best, not bad, nor the worst. Arnie has his moments, and strengths and weaknesses like any other. It's a matter of who is directing him or understands his strengths and where he lacks. While starting off rough, he did not take him long to improve. If you think I'm being soft on him, wait until you meet my parents.
Not really. Most of what you see is how the Joker was in his first appearance in the comics.
Yep, that's my stance when it comes to my enjoyment of Limp Bizkit. I enjoy their music, but I don't consider them like really deep musicians. They are more entertainers. But I enjoy their songs, and they were a fun band to see live in concert.
Eh, for me, I just don't care about that kind of detail. I am apparently in a weird minority of movie goers, and consumers of entertainment, that I am fine with a higher level of "non-realism" in my movies/tv. Mostly it boils down to the realities of the actual humans playing these roles. Learning to get rid of, or learn a new accent, is NOT easy. It takes a LOT of work, and training, and even then, a lot of the time, people still don't get it right, and we see YT vids of people shitting on someone's accent in a film. Or complaining about how this actor isn't muscly enough for the source material, or whatever, forgetting the fact that the kind of body alterations needed to try and look like a fucking comic book character are 1. Unrealistic as fuck, and 2. Unhealthy for any actual human to try and maintain. Seriously the shit actors do, to look all ripped and swol for a film, like water starvation, are dangerous as fuck. Do we REALLY need to see the vein definition in someone's bicep to enjoy the film, and believe he's throwing a fucking car that's all CGI anyway?
Like I said, I LIKE Arnold for the most part. I even consider several of his films to be personal favorites. Last Action Hero is a great film, and a fun deconstruction of the very genre that made Arnold famous. But I don't think he's a good actor. I think he is a subpar actor, that has a lot of other qualities, that help make up for that lack, and has allowed him to maintain a successful career. Which is fine. I don't like everything he's done, and I don't think a lot of his films hold up with time. But I also acknowledge that, given the literal millions of people who are in acting as a career, there are tons of subpar actors out there. I'm fine with that. I don't need every actor in every film ever, to be gunning for that Oscar. Just be good enough for the role your in, and entertain me within the context of the film, and I'm fine.
The only problem is that for my money, The Dark Knight got a little too into its own gritty noir and realness. Like it set the tone well enough at the start - Nolan gives Mann a run for his money with that bank robbery - that if you go in without context you’d think you’re watching a movie like Heat or the Departed. And then suddenly Batman shows up and I’m left tilting my head a bit. There is no reason the Joker shouldn’t have been shot dead by any number of guards at that meeting of Gotham’s mob bosses. Gamble not having more than two men present when the bounty he’s put out is being claimed by a bunch of street punks is ludicrous for any responsible gangster. Or that bomb the Joker implanted in his goon not being discovered because apparently prisoners are not searched or examined before being processed in the Gotham PD - although that one IS plausible to a point.
Space Jam was possibly one of the most nakedly commercial things to ever exist. Yet it seemed to own that and as such I can't help but have some respect for it.
Lousy in that he wasn't a point-for-point recreation of the comic book caricature of a super villain? Fine; he was not that. I'd argue THAT Joker is less interesting by orders of magnitude than what Ledger gave us. Remove Batman's strict no-kill policy, and you've got a clown prince that is literally a joke and more an inconvenience than a threat. That character has never been interesting. Ledger's Joker was interesting because he was always the only one laughing, a true psychopath who didn't bother with a tossed-on British accent, fancy clothes and desires for power and control; Ledger was simply insane and desired nothing save for chaos, and it was a lot more intriguing to watch. If you want comic book Joker, Ledger wasn't that, but if you want true, incomprehensibly disturbed villain in a film, Ledger WAS that and fit perfectly in the noire take the Nolan films were going for.
But that's what they were going for. With the deluge of hero films preceding and coming in the wake of the Nolan Batman films, it at least tried to be something different, taking familiar characters, and instead of saying "remember this from comics and cartoons?", they challenged us to observe what true psychopathy and violence from a mad genius might look like. I'll fault no one for not liking the Nolan Batman films; to each their own. But in a vacuum removed from "what Batman is supposed to be," The Dark Knight was an excellent film, and Ledger's Joker one of the more notable antagonists in the last couple of decades. We can agree that Batman was probably the most out-of-place character in his own movie, but as the antithesis to The Joker, he kinda had to be there.
