Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Scientific research on Heath's vs. Jack's Joker interpretation

Heath Ledger or Jack Nicholson? Who is a better Joker? I thought that when I see the movie (The Dark Night) and could decide easily, but that is not the case. The problem is that you can't really compare the two Jokers as they are pretty different. So the only way I imagine, that could help me get to the final decision is a very scientific, non biased and objective comparison of the two. The control subject of my study is the Joker we all have in mind - Joker from cards (see picture on the left). He is the standard that I will compare Heath's and Jack's interpretation of the Joker too.
Let's start!

First category: Fashion style

Description: In this category Jack and Heath compete in their fashion style. Compared to the control subject, what they should have is a hat, funny clothing and elf like unfashionable shoes.
Analysis: Both Jack and Heath fail to demonstrate a crazy hat, so the get 0 points. When comparing the clothing we get to the conclusion that both don't have as crazy clothes as the control subject but wear purple color which should not be a normal men's suit color. They both get one point for courage. Lastly, shoes. I have to admit I do not remember the shoes they wore. So, since they did not stick in my memory, I scientifically conclude that they were not crazy enough to be memorable and the both get 0 points for this one.
Results:
Jack: 1 point
Heath: 1 point

Second category: Creepy smile


Description: The most recognizable characteristic of the Joker is his smile. It is what maker him very creepy and is the deciding factor for most parent's decision of rather inviting a clown to their children's parties.
Analysis:



After detailed study of the zoomed in and enlarged pictures of the three smiles we can conclude that Jack's smile seems to resemble the control subject more. Jack is the only one that actually has his mount pinned up in a, what seems to be, a very hurtful way, so he deserves a point for this. Heath on the other hand has very bad scars from his father's evil ways, but he fails to demonstrate a smile as we see in the control subject. He, sadly, gets 0 points for this.
Result:
Jack: 1 point
Heath: 0 points

Third category: Persona

Description: What counts here is the character, evilness and overall madness that the actor portrays.
Analysis: Jack's Joker always smiles. He is happy, dances around, and would be (if you didn't know he likes to kill people for amusement) a very good party host. Heath's Joker, on the other hand, is darker, not so happy, all about destroying simply for the pleasure of destruction. He is the "messed up, my father molested me and i am not smiling since then" Joker. It depends on the type of the viewer but my analysis shows that Jack's Joker is more suitable for happy, positive people who like to be cheerful a lot, whereas Heath's Joker suits darker, depressed, negative people better. But as they both did such a great job at figuring out what a Joker should be like, they both deserve a point.
Result:
Jack: 1 point
Heath: 1 point

Fourth category: Public opinion

Description: As this is a very objective research we have to take the public vote into account. So here are the votes from the poll that has been taking place on this blog for the past couple of weeks (i know, not that many votes, but hey it's not like I'm Yahoo! - which is by the way the most popular website according to Alexa.com).
Results:
Jack: 6 votes (counts as 6 points)
Heath: 4 votes (counts as 4 points)

Fifth category: Personal veto

Description: Every really good research has to be at least a little bit biased, that is why I included this category. Here, my personal vote counts as 1 point as I don't want to make the research all too biased :)
Results:
Jack: 1 point
Heath: 0 points

Final results

When combining results from each category, these are the numbers we get:
Jack: 10 points
Heath: 7 points

So the official winner of the Heath vs. Jack competition is: Jack Nicholson. Congratulation to both, but fame and glory goes to the winner.

That's all for now...be Joker happy and keep an eye open for News (TM).

P.S. Those of you who actually payed attention to what you were reading, the final scores might not make sense. I added an extra point to Heath at the last moment for his sexiness as this aspect of his interpretation must not be ignored :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So after watching both movies you still agree with your verdict that Jack is better than Heath?

You must be fucking BLIND to not see that Heath blew Jack out of the water on this one.