Psychos R Us: Joker Channels Gordon
Author: Lucas
July 24th, 2008
Don’t ask me why these are all Batman themed posting at KFR. I guess I am trying to make up for the previous comments about TDK.
Will this post show my age? Its interesting to see the choices Heath Ledger made on his Joker portrayal. But I don’t think he looked much further than his co-star for inspiration. In his prime, in the 80’s and 90’s - many people would be surprised to know that the new Commissioner Gordon would have peed all over his Harry Potter scripts and doused Harvey Dent in gasoline the moment he met him - the most badass actor of his generation: Gary Oldman.
I know many of you might only know Oldman as the crazy rasta from True Romance or the space-mafia in The Fifth Element but those were his downward spiral movies. Even though the movie was just so-so, Gary Oldman kicked all kinds of Joker-ass as a psycho Irish mobster in the 1990 film State of Grace.
Don’t believe me - check this out:
Excuse me if I say this, but Oldman scares me more as Jackie Flannery, and he has no make-up on!
Imagine if Nolan was in Burton’s chair in 1989 and you can see who he would have cast as his Joker.
Ok to be fair, Jack’s Joker performance was not so unlike Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice performance without the supernatural element - but since they were both Tim Burton movies and we know Burton is a bit of a one trick pony, Beetlejuice was probably considered a prototype for his Batman movie.
I do like the internet rumour was spread that before casting Ledger that Keaton was bandied around a bit as a possible Joker for The Dark Knight - that probably would have never happened but just think about that for a minute.
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3 Responses to “Psychos R Us: Joker Channels Gordon”
July 24th, 2008 at 8:54 am
gary oldman in leon is also great
July 24th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Yes, Oldman had many amazing roles in his early career - Stansfield was a great part in Leon: The Professional. And I take it back, his career went downhill, when he played Dr. Smith in the neat but just disappointing Lost in Space movie remake, just like everyone’s who was also in it.
But he gets a bit of his bad-ass rep back as Harr Potter’s renegade uncle, Sirius Black, and although the Batman movies don’t ask much of him - he looks like the David Mazuchelli drawn Jim Gordon.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Yes! I’m glad someone else noticed that. I LOVED Mazuchelli’s run on Batman and I liked how Jim Gordon became more of a central character during that series.
Oldman looks EXACTLY like that!