by TheBaxter on Fri May 22, 2020 5:06 pm
i don't know how to compare this performance to Heath Ledger's. Joaquin obviously had a lot more to work with, the entire film revolves around him, and the character is more fleshed out. Ledger's Joker is like a tornado or an earthquake, a natural disaster that strikes out of nowhere with no rhyme or reason. there's no backstory for his version (other than his own unreliable, contradictory stories about his scars) and we don't know anything more about who he is or where he came from at the end of the film than we did at the beginning... and i think that's a strength of the film, at a time when it felt like every superhero film had to devote so much time to explaining the origin stories of every hero or villain in the films, to have a character without those easy explanations was a welcome change. ledger did a great job with what was asked of him to make that kind of role worked, and joaquin did a great job with the more fully realized version in his script, they're just such different kinds of roles, outside of name Joker they're completely different characters in so many ways.
this film really knocked it out of the park on the talk show scene. he goes into that interview with a plan, and you can see the moment when that plan changes. the awkwardness and uncomfortableness of that interview is really effective. definitely brings to mind moments like crispin glover's letterman interview, and of course joaquin's own letterman interview when he was pretending to be a rapper... albeit with a much different conclusion.
