No disrespect for Heath Ledger

Have yiu seen the movie ?

.... There point was Ledger didn't get an entire origin movie.

I think Heath would have been great in this and you can clearly see the inspiration taken from his joker in this.

Ditto

I don't think he was bad, just overrated, like Nolan's Batman films generally.

Completely agree. Where is the great acting there? I'm still waiting for someone to tell me which bits merited some of the hysterical acclaim.

Pheonix's Joker wasn't just better but miles better.

He tasted the champagne though it it tasted like piss then throw it out and placed the glass back. He was showing that only the glass had value while the liquid needed to be disgarded. Lederts joker was more sadistic which is what made him creepy not the set up for him to give a fake origin story about how he got his scares before he killed some one.

I actually though phoenix's involuntary laughter was corny and took me out of the moment. Phoenix's ledger just kind of stumbled into his villian role which feels pretty indifferent to the disturbed master mind we saw in dark knight.

Ledgers joker was trying to show us that we can't/shouldn't try to reason with a disturbed mind that is nihilistic and has no value human life including his own if we are truley trying to protect the public as our goal. It showed us yo u can't reason with a terrorist and that attempts to avoid killing the joker only leads to more innocent people dying for nothing. This joker is evil rational but has different goals then that of an ordinary person would. The film tries to show us that evil (if you can at least view it as anti altruistic behavior) does exist and that rational evil minds do exist in a world where people still believe you can talk your way out of any situation. This film tries to show that attempts reasoning with an evil actor will not change their minds.

Phoenix's joker is the tragic story of a disabled man who wants nothing more then to fit into society and make people laugh. He is bullied beaten and broken by the evils of society and that some how our society is what created the joker. Phoenix's joker is not an organic evil but was created by us and that its our fault that our society turned a generally harmless disabled man into the joker that plagued Gotham and Batman. If only the department of social services kept giving joker his medication we wouldn't have had this problem. If only our society didn't have such a percieved gap between the wealthy.

Ledger was trying to be evil and scary. Phoenix wasn't trying to be evil or scary, that was the point, he was a Frankenstein's monster created by society and circumstance. In the end he was scary because you realize this could be anybody and you might be partly responsible. My point about Ledger is that he didn't have to act like anyone familiar. His joker was an entirely new take on the character. I'm not saying he was bad, I'm saying he gets too much credit because what he did wasn't hard.