Jul 01 2008
The Dark Knight— A movie I’d rather not see
I’d rather not see the latest in the Batman movies. I’ve been a fan of the Batman movies ever since the first Tim Burton movie back in 1989. I’ve even checked into the comicbooks from time to time despite (or because of) Frank Miller’s psychotic rendition.
But this is one Batman movie is not what I had in mind as a good time for one overwhelming reason. The death of Heath Ledger.
I believe this role ultimately killed him and I don’t see how anyone can rationalize it. He said the role got under his skin. The sociopathic madman in the Joker got inside him when he played that role, haunted him, refused to let him sleep, as though the evil he portrayed latched onto him.
Heath Ledger described his sleepless nights and mental exhaustion as he wrestled with his role as the “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic” Joker in the new Batman film.
He died overdosing on sleeping pills.
I know there are some who say they’re going to see this movie in honor of Ledger, but I think it’s darn close to morbid.
… to be entertained by the movie that killed Heath Ledger— kind of like laughing over a man’s grave, there’s just something not right about it…
Thomas is close to the truth. Hollywood now venerates the psychopath as normative behaviour. More than just influencing the minds of the impressionable, this trend reflects the deeper malaise in American social thought - self absorbed, reactive, given to fantastic thoughts, increasingly disconnected from reality.
A highly conditioned and manipuated society, chronically ill, physically and mentally. Their movies show them for what they have become.
Jack Smith