Ledger’s Joker Wins Best Supporting Actor, But…
Heath Ledger won the Best Supporting Actor last night at the Academy Awards for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Nerds rejoiced. But, if I might bring everybody down for a minute, there’s no way Ledger would have won if he were alive today.
I’m not saying his performance wasn’t amazing, or that he didn’t potentially deserve it. What I am saying is that the Academy voted for his tragic death, not his performance. They hate comic movies, but love weepy sentimentalism — both in films and in real life. They have long since stopped judging actual performances, despite the name of the actual awards.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.