Batman Continues
 

So, I saw the film this past weekend and really enjoyed it. Despite the licenses the Nolans took with the Joker's origins, Heath was a pitch-perfect Mr. J. I know, they didn't mention his origin, but the Joker is technically supposed to have chemically altered pigments, not make-up. I did think the Glasgow smile was a nice stylistic touch, though.

I thought there was alot of nice, subtle, dark humor (only someone as dark as me could conceive of why a potato peeler was in with the Joker's knives) in everything the Joker did ( a fiery blockade composed entirely of firetrucks?).

I also appreciated the fact that this was a good Batman movie that managed to make the plot include the Batmobile losing a wheel (the Batpod) and the Joker running away (his escape from jail).

Do we know for certain that he didn't have chemically altered pigments? I know that other characters referred to him as wearing make-up but that should be dismissable as an assumption.

Dunno if I mentioned it in the last thread but my favorite thing about the Joker in this movie was that in addition to being a sociopathic mass murderer doubling as the embodiment of chaos itself, they remembered to actually make him funny.

I never thought of that. Well played.

Fifth - Other characters mentioned he wore makeup, and during the interrogation scene you can see most of it peeling away, especially on his forehead.

Fifth, yeah, I also noticed that the make-up was coming off.

I was gonna say Well maybe he pulled a Nicholson and put make-up over his pigments, and put make-up over that! Then I thought, 'No, Seil - that's what a crazy person would do.' Then I remembered that hey, yeah - the Joker is insane. Of course, I could just be stupid.

On makeup:

Did I miss the part where we should care? It's probably because I don't follow the comic/origins, but the old "pre-villain falling into a vat of acid/fire/chemicals/liquid nitrogen/venom/doom juice" is tired and discardable, kind of like old Spiderman shooting webs up into the sky while he's in the desert is discardable. I like laughing at the idea of Batman running to the back of his batmobile and whipping up a mysterious protein solution, but ye-argh, just normal creepy make-up is still creepy and didn't detract from Joker's performance or message. So says I.

Show some respect to the comics, man. Without them, there'd be no Batman, and without Batman, there'd be no movies, and without movies, there wouldn't be fifteen different threads praising Ledger as a god.

Lots of gruesome acts probably affected causality enough to ensure my existence, but that doesn't mean I should follow in their footsteps or still think they're a good idea.

And that's not to say the comics are gruesome either, I just see absolutely no reason how Joker using actual clown make-up instead of chemical pigmentation he got from falling into a vat of chemical pigments (which WOULD conflict with Nolanverse's realism probably) can be construed as a lack of respect for the comics. I'd say these movies do Batman a lot more justice than any movies to date.

I was actually commenting on that vein.

The point stands!