The Joker had a very good night at the 2020 Academy Awards. The 2019 critically-acclaimed film featuring Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, won TWO Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. This makes Phoenix the second actor to win an Oscar for portraying the Joker on the silver screen.
Phoenix’s Joker is a unique variation on the villain from Heath Ledger’s take, but both performances are equally powerful. Ledger won his Oscar posthumously at the 2009 Academy Awards, having died the previous year from an overdose.
After the critical claim of the Joker at the Venice Film Festival in September, the movie continued to receive praise from audiences everywhere when it hit theaters in October. Joker currently garners an 88% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes.
In spite of riding a positive wave, Joaquin Phoenix was up against stiff competition for Best Actor. Other competitors for the category included Leonardo DiCaprio for Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Antonio Banderas for Pain and Glory, Jonathan Pryce for The Two Popes, and Kylo Ren himself, Adam Driver for Marriage Story.
Hildur Guðnadóttir, Icelandic cellist and composer, won the Oscar for Best Original Score. Her hauntingly dark score for Joker was also in a tough category. Guðnadóttir was competing against John Williams for Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, Randy Newman for Marriage Story, Thomas Newman (Randy Newman’s cousin) for 1917, and Alexandre Desplat for Little Women.
Joker also made history as the first comic book movie to lead Oscar nominations.
Congratulations to all the winners!
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