[Doc Faustus]

I said Ledger. I felt Christian Bale was a very pale imitation of the Patrick Bateman I knew and loved from American Psycho. Anton Chigurh was cool, but I don't think a garden variety sociopath who loves his job makes a great villain. A great villain doesn't just want to kill the hero, a great villain is a threat to everything the hero stands for to the point at which, if this guy wins the world will be uninhabitable, not because the hero's dead but because their way of life is dead. Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter is a great example of this. If he gets that money, then it proves the world isn't safe for innocents and the god he follows approves of his actions and will let him come out on top. That's damn scary. We know bad men can get rich before we see No Country for Old Men. But, when we're presented with a character like Batman, the world changes. It's proof that one man can make a difference, that a person can yoke their inner demons and use them against the outer demons of Gotham. He represents a lot of hope. But then you bring in Heath Ledger's the Joker. Just as Batman has taken on a mantle of darkness to spread good, The Joker puts on a smile and perverts something bright and cheerful. Heath Ledger's Joker is a philosophical threat of the highest order, like Lucifer, Set, Mephistopheles, Loki and Herod. He shows that sometimes you can't impose meaning on chaos, that our inner demons can't always be used to the world's benefit and that the world is barely able to hang on. If the Joker wins, life becomes more meaningless and a lot of hope disappears. That's a huge stake. And Ledger shows that this is so. Damn, that's good villainy.