12 Things Warner Bros Want You To Forget About Batman Movies

11. Heath Ledger's Oscar-Winning Performance (The Dark Knight)

It can't be over-estimated what Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight did for comic book movies: it dared filmmakers to aim higher and made evident that a silly film about a guy dressing up as a bat could aspire to be a riveting crime thriller on the level of something like The Departed. Much of the film's success can be attributed to the late Heath Ledger, who of course gave an unforgettable performance as The Joker, one which won him a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar and laid down the gauntlet to other comic book films to do the same. The performance has been almost universally lauded ever since release, and endures as easily the most-acclaimed turn in any superhero movie to date. Why Warner Want You To Forget As fantastic as Ledger's work was, it creates a very distinct problem in the here and now, because as most of the money from The Dark Knight has been made, Warner are looking to reboot The Joker in their DCCU, as played by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad and beyond. The big problem is that, no matter how different Leto's Joker is, he's going to inevitably be compared to Ledger until the end of time, most likely unfavourably. In an ideal world, fans would just accept multiple diverse interpretations of a given character on their own terms, but that's just not going to happen, and Warner must hate that no matter how good Leto is in the role, he's almost certainly going to come up short for more casual viewers who will cling to Ledger's excellent work.