Last night at the Golden Globes, Heath Ledger won the Best Supporting Actor award for his absolutely amazing performance as everyones favorite homicidal clown The Joker in last year's biggest damn movie The Dark Knight.
Unfortunately though, as we all know the award was won posthumously due to Ledger's tragic death last year. The award was accepted by Dark Knight's director Christopher Nolan.
While it is sad that Heath Ledger is no longer with us to accept the award, I can't help but feel incredibly happy that an actor has won a major Hollywood award like this for their role in a comic book movie. Comic book films, much like sci-fi films, are usually the ugly sibilings that Hollywood tends to ignore come awards season. While the movie industry has absolutely no problem in accepting the massive amounts of cash that superhero and sci-fi films bring in at the box office, they're almost never included in the Best Film or Best Actor/Actress categories come awards season.
In fact, it usually seems that Hollywood looks down upon comic films and the like as second class citizens which are unworthy of high praise due to them not being seen as important or as artistic as, oh say a drama or historical period piece. So to have the lead villain of a comic book film earn a Best Supporting Actor nod is both a suprising and welcome change. There's even talk that Heath Ledger may be up for winning an Oscar for his role as the clown prince of crime.
Maybe this is the beginning of a positive change in the way comic book films are seen in Hollywood. One can hope that if Ledger wins the Oscar, it might help to legitimize comic book films as valid expressions of art amongst the Hollywood elite. I'm so hopeful of this that I'll even completely ignore the fact that Ledger should be up for the Best Actor award since he was a main star in the film, and not a supporting actor. But whatever, right now I'll take what I can get.
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