The Dark Knight is officially a box office hit.
Breaking news from Hollywood is that Heath Ledger, actor famous from his role in Brokeback Mountain and many others, has been found dead in his appartment. Another tragic incident where the pressure of public expectation seems to have driven one more into the unknown.
Right now as a reader of my blog you are probably wondering why I am mentioning this, as it is highly irrelevant to the topics of which I normally focus on. The answer is twofold. First of all I really liked Ledger as an actor. He gave us some excellent performances in movies such as The Patriot, The Four Feathers and others.
But as the headline says, this really is about his latest work, the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight. I have previously explored some marketing techniques used in promoting The Dark Knight, and I simply wanted to point out how unforeseen things like these can affect our work.
Now if it was up to me, this movie would be pulled out of respect for Ledger and his close ones. Unfortunately, and this is the flipside of capitalism, we live in a world ruled by money, and that is unlikely to be the case. The most likely scenario is that this movie will be remembered as the last performance of someone who was dragged out of our world well before his time. Due to the nature of Ledger’s role, I won’t be surprised if this movie in a couple of years stands as somewhat of a cult symbol in rememberance of him.
I for one will still go see the movie, most likely with many others who never actually planned to. And I also still look forward to seeing Ledger’s intepretation of The Joker. I’m still convinced it will be awesome, and knowing myself, I will probably remember it just that much better because of what happened today.
In closing I would just like to extend my condolences to all of those who knew and cared about Heath Ledger. I didn’t, but he did seem like a great guy from what I could tell. Rest in peace.
2 responses to this article :
I actually heard they were thinking of finding someone to refilm his parts so as to take him out of the movie at all and make someone else the joker.
this is crap. there have been lots of other movies released where an actor has died. brandon lee (the crow) for example. they didn’t edit and replace him they just found someone to finish the movie and no one knew the difference.
maybe im just one of those people who could care less, but i don’t think batman should be pulled or edited. just release it. let the public see it. if they have their opinions thats fine. it’s just a movie and doesnt effect emotions and feelings toward ledger.
by Jenny / on January 29th, 2008, 6:02 pm / permalink
Jenny: I think that you are actually thinking about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which is another movie Heath Ledger was involved with.
They weren’t finished with the filming in the case of this movie, and it has been speculated that they will either redo the parts with Ledger in it, or bring in someone else to replace him in the parts that haven’t been filmed (rumour has it Johnny Depp is first choice in this scenario). It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
As for The Dark Knight, well I haven’t heard anything at all that indicates it won’t be released as planned, seeing how they were already in post-production (finished with all the filming) when Ledger died. This article by Christopher Nolan, where he mentions thinking about Heath when putting together the final version of the movie, seems to confirm that it will be released as planned as well.
by Lars-Christian / on January 29th, 2008, 9:45 pm / permalink
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