Heath Ledger's Joker: After Heath's Death, What Will Be Different In Regards to The Dark Knight

I came across an interesting blog post and found myself digging through the memory banks of my pop culture riddled mind for memories of comic book movie marketing past. I found myself responding in length on the post's link on ShowHype, but thought I could be a little more verbose (oh yay!) here.

The question lies in this poster and whether or not the poster is banking on Ledger's death:

You know, seriously, it's a valid question. And normally, I would find such marketing suspect.

If we weren't talking about The Joker, that is.

Before Heath's death, I expected a big marketing push surrounding The Joker. He is the big man on campus when it comes to the Batman rogue gallery. Hell, he's the granddaddy of all comic book villains.

But honestly, this really isn't out of the norm for comic book film derivatives and the villains that star in them. Sure, you have your exceptions. Like Batman Begins for instance.

Neither The Scarecrow nor Ra's Al Ghul were big parts of the Batman Begins' marketing push. But to me, that was perfectly understandable. Both characters were familiar to those familiar with the Batman comic or maybe even just Batman: The Animated Series, but to the average film goer? Nah. Let's not kid ourselves. For most people who have only watched the films, The Scarecrow is that guy in The Wizard of OZ. And a friendly fellow he was, too.

Then there's the Joker. As far as I'm concerned, he was the *first* supervillain. Lex Luthor is just a mobster. The Joker is a true supervillain worthy of his own marketing push.

First of all, he was truly one of Batman's first enemies. Wikipedia spells it out pretty well in their Joker page:

The Joker is a fictional character and supervillain that appears in the comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson, the Joker is the archenemy of the superhero Batman and first appeared in Batman #1 (Spring 1940).

The Wikipedia article also notes that The Joker was voted by Wizard Magazine as being the greatest villain of all time and that Nicholson's Joker was ranked #45 in AFI's Top 50 Film Villains of All Time.

Seriously, when we're talking comic books, The Joker is a big deal. Definitely bigger as far as popularity and scope than Ironman and he has his own movie (Note: Ironman fans, don't get mad at me - I'm not suggesting that he's a better character - just that his familiarity with the masses is more pronounced).

Ledger's Joker was shroud in secrecy with Warner Brothers attempting their best to keep the Joker's face hidden until the first real trailer hit the screen. If you've followed this mess since the beginning, you'll know that they were only half successful due to those fan pictures someone snapped of Ledger heading to his trailer in make-up.

Then there were the mock-ups and even that one photo that everyone thought was real and then turned out to be a hoax. Oy.

Bottom line is: Joker's a big deal around the woods of Pop Culture Central. And he's a big deal for Batman.

But even with The Joker aside, it's not anything new for film studios to make a big deal of a supervillain in a comic book film.

Here's just a few examples.

All of these posters were present in the theater before each film's release. There were others as well. Penguin, Poison Ivy, etc.

Hell, anyone remember these? I think I had the whole set:

So, while I definitely think the blogger has a valid point, I think that when viewed within the context of movie marketing for comic book films, what they're doing with The Joker and his promotional posters are quite normal and no different than they would have been had Ledger still been alive.

Now, what is a little goofy is the Oscar talk for Ledger's Joker. Never ever would that have happened had Ledger not passed away. Comic book films and Oscar just really don't mix. Not outside the special effects arena. Hell, most of us geeks are still amazed that Return of the King wiped the floor of the Academy (deservedly).

And while I didn't know Ledger, common sense tells me that he was an actor who attempted to strive for some artistic integrity. I think he would have found such a posthumous attempt to be overdone and exploitive. Just my opinion.

And now that's out of the way, I must say that when it comes to The Dark Knight marketing machine, I think I'm digging these two posters the most:

Put together, they're absolutely magnificent because of their similarity. I also think that they represent how they originally represented the two characters. Polar opposites, but needing the other in order to truly exist.

Oh and BTW, they finally released the photos of Eckhart as Two-Face and I can see why they've been hiding him. It's seriously both scary and amazing in terms of the work they did. Take a look: Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face.

I think it's safe to say that he won't be getting his own poster.

(All photos © Warner Brothers)