Miscellaneous Thoughts

I don't actually have the attention span to watch Academy Awards, but I have heard that Heath Ledger won an Oscar, and that's pretty cool.

I don't understand the group of fans that apparently want to "retire" the Joker from the movies now. Granted, I'd like to see the series focus on other villains, a.la Hugo Strange for example, but I don't really think it's a compliment to Heath Ledger to want to retire the role just because he was really good at it and now he's dead.

His performance was brilliant, no question, and it will remain a brilliant performance no matter if they end up using the Joker again later. The new guy would have a very unenviable task of either being a poor mimic or finding his own version that may or may not succeed with the fans.

That said, even if Ledger were still alive, I'm not sure they'd really be able to effectively use the Joker again. Just because so much of the character works off of shock value, if they use him again, there'd be the irresistible urge to try to top what came before.

I suppose what you can really get out of this is that I'm an indecisive twit. :-) But fairly glad about the Oscar win anyway. :-)