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Every Monday, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

by Matt. Murray

At this year’s Academy Awards, Heath Ledger made a certain kind of cinematic history by becoming the first actor to win an Oscar for a role originated in the pages of a comic book. As a nominee, he followed in the footsteps of acting greats Al Pacino and Paul Newman, who were likewise recognized in the Best Supporting Actor category for their respective turns as funny book villains in Dick Tracy and Road to Perdition. (Note: William Hurt was the only other actor ever nominated for a comic book movie, again for Best Supporting Actor as a villain, in 2005’s A History of Violence. However, his character was completely a construct of the film’s creative team, and didn’t actually appear in the graphic novel.)

It’s easy for some to dismiss the win as the crowning of a lost prom king in a last dance popularity contest for Ledger – who passed away six months before his Joker hit the screens in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Ledger was previously nominated in 2006 for his work in Brokeback Mountain, which at the time seemed like the beginning of a string of nominations to come for a clearly talented young man. The voters passed him over then, perhaps under the mistaken belief that they’d be getting back to him eventually with a little golden man. However this time around, they may have given it to him posthumously for his last completed turn, as they didn’t get the chance to do it properly before. Lifetime achievement awards are rarely given out for a career that barely spanned a decade, no matter how beloved an artist may have been by the community.

However, to assume that does belie the work of the actor, who with Nolan as his director, crafted a suitably creepy character with a low-speaking, loud-acting instant crescendo of insanity which coupled with his over-explained or under-explained facial scarring, was as visually unsettling as the scratched string solo that was his theme music. Ledger’s Joker, literally and figuratively, brought color to the muted palette still present from Nolan’s somber first Bat-film, Batman Begins. His grimy green hair and purple patchwork plaid outfits pop against cinematographer Wally Pfister’s sepia-toned street lamps and startlingly sterile white day light. It truly was a role worthy of recognition during this award season.

All that said, Ledger’s Joker and indeed the entire $1 billion cultural juggernaut that The Dark Knight has become has to an extent overshadowed a year that should have belonged to another superhero — Iron Man, and/or the man who brought a B-list character to the A-list (and himself in the process), Robert Downey, Jr.

For my money, Iron Man was the better of the two superhero films to hit the screens in the Summer of ’08… and I paid almost twice as much to see the Caped Crusader as I did to see the Tin Can (IMAX on opening night of TDK and such.) Although the Joker had the Iron Monger beat in the villain department, overall Iron Man was better paced and didn’t ultimately feel like it was three different movies trying to be one. Let’s face it: The Dark Knight, with it’s Joker ending, Two-Face ending and Gordon monologue tying it up for Bats had almost as many codas as Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. However, where Iron Man was crafted in the ebullient spirit of cinematic predecessors such as the Richard Donner Superman and Sam Raimi’s first two Spider-Mans, Dark Knight did break new ground for mainstream superhero flicks by wallowing in the pathos of the protagonist and really getting into the nasty nitty-gritty of why and how heroes and villains choose to do what they do. For a public who may not have had the benefit of really reading the past twenty-three years of quality comics it was in essence as mind blowing as when fanboys first turned the pages of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen.

Heath’s fallen icon buzz may have initially attracted a wider audience to the opening of his film, but it was that dramatic scope which kept that new audience returning for more and more, driving TDK‘s box office numbers into blockbuster territory. People couldn’t believe that a “real” movie with complex emotions and an engaging plot line(s) could be based on a comic book.  Maybe since then they’ve taken the time to open a comic that came out post-1986.  They sell them everywhere now, so there’s no excuse for them not to have.

Then Downey, beaten at the box-office,  had the misfortune of squaring off against Ledger at the Oscars. Even if it didn’t happen in an on-screen, cross-publisher, cross-studio blow-out bonanza the Best Supporting Actor pool had Downey and Ledger viciously circling each other like Siamese fighting fish. Again, had it been any other year, Downey’s turn as Kirk Lazarus would have snatched the award with the comedic skill and ballsy attitude with which he took control of his other summer movie, Tropic Thunder. However, this time maybe, the Academy was up to its old trick again – assuming there will be other chances for Downey, the newly (re-)minted movie star (as long as his sobriety holds out, that is). Who knows – maybe he’ll even get a nod for Tony Stark, perhaps for dramatizing the point at which the character’s sobriety doesn’t hold out, releasing that demon in the proverbial bottle.  Either way, this Oscar night wasn’t his time to shine.

Despite being the evening of Ledger’s win, I don’t even think it was his (dark) night to shine despite the history making or the teary eyes when his family accepted the award in his honor. No, from the perspective of my couch, as I watched the ceremony beam onto my screen, the Awards show (though not an award or even a nomination) was owned by another Australian actor – Hugh Jackman. Yes, Ol’ Adamantium Bones himself sunk his claws into the festivities, making a definite and distinctive mark as the host.

In what was overall a drawn-out, lackluster production involving over-long palankas being spoken to and about actors by other actors during the acting categories, the real best performance came at the very beginning – in the form of Jackman’s first musical number.

Claiming that due to cut-backs, he was denied the proper budget for an opening song and dance number, he joked that he stayed up the night before hand-crafting props to represent all of the films being celebrated at the ceremony. He then nimbly pranced through an amusing musical romp that looked like it came directly from the deviously daring DIY brain of Michel Gondry with elements reminiscent of Dave McKean‘s dark collage pastiches thrown in for good measure. Hugh’s crowning moment came in the act’s closing lines, as he climbed a rickety riser, splayed his arms in a pose all too familiar to the readers of the X-Men, clenched his fists and triumphantly sang at the top of his lungs: “I’m Wolverine!”

A truly heroic turn Mr. Jackman! Now, if he gets an Emmy, for hosting the Oscars, during which he pulled that bit of four-colors-for-a-dime brilliance… then there’s another one we can chalk up in the entertainment history books.  Keep that one in mind for next year’s awards season…

Matt. Murray earned his BFA in film, television and radio production from NYU. He has curated exhibits focusing on the art and commerce of Saturday Morning cartoons and the adaptation of illustrated media into live actions films and animation. Murray is the country’s leading (if not only) Smurfologist. His personal blog, It’s Time for Some Action, can be found at http://actnmatt.blogspot.com/

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