It wasn’t the adultery it was the stupidity. He came across as a daft bimbo after daring reporters to follow him and then getting his hand caught in the cookie jar soon after.

If a movie is superficially entertaining, but leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth because of how ill-timed it’s political message is, shouldn’t that warrant a bad review? 

In my own recollection, Gary Hart lost the public’s trust for being stupid enough to ask reporters to follow him around.

And yes, you should be smart enough not to conduct an extramarital affair while running for office. This is not that hard.

The tongue flicking is great. I don’t know if it was in the script or a choice of Ledger’s (I think Ledger’s choice), but it almost certainly indicates that he’s been on, and is coming off of, anti-psychotic drugs. It’s a somewhat rare, but fairly well-known side effect of antipsychotics called https://en.wikipedia.org…

I’m really surprised that after Ledger’s performance that they’re even bothering with Joker again, (not to mention two of them). I’m not a huge fan of TDK but man, I love watching the Joker’s scenes. He was phenomenal but the writing for him was fantastic as well. There will never be another character like him, ever.

Don’t know that I agree with you about Iron Man overall, but you’re bang on about Marvel actually managing to make the hero the interesting character, and how surprisingly revolutionary that was. Even a guy as straightforward as Captain America became compelling.

I think TDKR was Nolan saying “this is it. This is the complete Batman story I’m going to tell. No more.” The Joseph Gordon Levitt subplot was provided as a sop to fans who wanted to imagine the story continuing, but I can’t imagine Nolan setting up a more definitive ending for *his* Batman. Plus, how would Nolan’s…

He’s right about “three years” but only because the MCU’s output was not yet the constant barrage it is now. Three years is only 3 movies between Iron Man and the First Avenger. Now, three years of MCU movies is 9 friggin’ movies.

You had me until your last sentence. IMHO, Nicholson’s Joker is the closest to the comic book Clown Prince of Crime, but Ledger’s is a BETTER character. Other than that, I agree with you about the AVENGERS being the most important comic book movie, if there is such a thing.

I was going to disagree with Tom’s statement about the MCU not making another good movie for three years after Iron Man, but...huh, he’s right. Thor isn’t awful, but I couldn’t call it good, and Iron Man 2 is still the only genuinely bad movie in the history of the MCU. Captain America in 2011 broke the losing streak,…

The thing that impressed me so much about Ledger was you could tell about who the Joker was simply by the way he stood. Sort of lopsided and off kilter. I’ve never seen acting carried to such a level as that. When you see him waiting at the corner in the opening minute you know exactly who he is.

“Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Hot take: Iron Man is nowhere near the most important superhero movie.

To me Cillian Murphy’s role as Judge Scarecrow seemed like it was intended for Ledger’s Joker.

My favorite bit of acting in the film is how he bristles when one of the gangsters calls him crazy. He reels for a moment and you learn so much about him in one fraction of a second.

I’d argue that the real problem with the DCU isn't that they learned the wrong lessons from The Dark Knight so much as they learned the wrong lesson from The Avengers, namely that making a team up movie was going to be a license to print money and that they needed to make a Justice League movie asap.  If they had just…

Unpopular opinion time: I still think Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy could’ve been the basis of the DCEU.

I always felt like Ledger’s Joker was a brilliant piece of acting because you could see the vulnerability behind the crazy. He always looked like someone desperate to prove himself, and since he couldn’t be the strongest or the fastest, he decided to be the craziest. I know there is no backstory in the movie, but I…

2008, as well as 2012 with Avengers and Dark Knight Rises, makes a great case on how Marvel and DC can co-exist with tonally different superhero movies. I expected nothing from Iron Man, only to be totally surprised by the end of the movie, while The Dark Knight more than lived up to the incredible hype. Whichever one…

1. Joker’s voice: