Movie Chronicles » The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger’s death leading to a cut scene? April 10th, 2008

Cin­ema Blend are report­ing that, in pre­view screen­ings of The Dark Knight, most has gone down well — but one scene involv­ing Heath Ledger as The Joker has left peo­ple aghast. There are now rumors it shall be removed for the final cut. To save on the spoil­ers (it’s noth­ing too major), I’ve posted the details after the break.

In other news, the Dark Knight’s first review has sur­faced online, chock filled with spoil­ers and all in Por­tugese, which was found online. Bat­man On Film have posted a very loose trans­la­tion of this — do not read it if you want to enjoy the movie to its fullest. They claim ele­ments match infor­ma­tion that is cur­rently held secret, they are giv­ing it their back­ing and believe it to be gen­uine, I shall remain scep­ti­cal however.

Thanks Keith for both stories!

The Joker scene in question:

The scene involves Ledger’s Joker char­ac­ter pre­tend­ing to be dead and being pic­tured in a body bag. Appar­ently the after­shock of Ledger’s unfor­tu­nate death are such that many in the screen­ing reacted rather badly to this moment and now execs are con­sid­er­ing excis­ing the scene alto­gether.

Comments No Responses to “Heath Ledger’s death leading to a cut scene?”

car­los April 12th, 2008

I think they should keep all scenes and stay true to the orig­i­nal story. I believe this will be a greater homage, than re-editing and chang­ing what ledger and the rest of the cast worked so hard for.


alex April 12th, 2008

While its under­stand­able that that scene is a tad dis­turb­ing to some peo­ple, I think the best trib­ute to Heath would be to show the entire movie with and all of his scenes, to rec­og­nize how much hard work he put into this role.


Anny April 15th, 2008

I think peo­ple are being too over dra­matic with this scene. I agree that they should keep it in because it is a part of the movie that Heath worked so hard on. Show his last work in it’s entirety. If you get upset at the body bag scene, close your eyes.


Ben April 21st, 2008

even if its not in the the­atri­cal it’d prob­a­bly make it to the DVD no?


Joker April 30th, 2008

I agree. The scene should be left in. Heath was very proud of his role as the Joker and to remove any scene with him in it as the Joker doing what the Joker would do best is in more bad taste than being creepy because he unfor­tu­nately died. Heath would want the scene to stay so (like the oth­ers said) why not keep all scenes with him as Joker in the movie.


Dragon87110 August 4th, 2008

It was thank­fully kept in. I per­son­ally didn’t even think about that while watch­ing the film. It was a great scene.


artoribio65 August 12th, 2008

where any of the scenes of the joker done by another actor, or are all the scenes keith ledger, i am not sure i have heard both things and just won­dered what was true.….…


dark knight October 7th, 2008

I think all scenes were kept in and no other actor was used or needed for the drak knight Joker scenes.


david December 13th, 2008

ive heard the the last scene was played by johnny dept but i dont think its true