Why was Christian Bale so poor in this?

Christopher Nolan's 2008 mega success about Batman's attempts to defeat a criminal mastermind known only as the Joker.
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I think Bale was awesome in all three Batman movies, including TDK. He gave a great portrayal of Bruce Wayne/Batman, even if he was at times overshadowed in the larger picture.

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gaspernoe wrote:
January 7th, 2013, 3:34 am
Of all the the things that can be praised about this truly wonderful movie, Bale's performance isn't one of them. I didn't notice it at first when I first saw TDK in theaters because I was so immersed by the story and Ledger's epic performance. But on repeat viewings I noticed how stilted and one dimensional his performance. It's always been a conundrum for me, especially when Christian Bale is a pretty good actor. Even without Ledger's overshadowing performance Bale looked like a shell in TDK. He wasn't nearly as good as he was in TDKR and even BB.
Outside of the growling voice, his performance was on point, as always. The scene where he mourns Rachel is one of my favorite performances by him, ever. His fake Bruce Wayne facade was also very compelling. It gave his character dimension that you claim he did not have. The subtlety of many scenes is beyond belief. Like when he comes to the party, takes champaign, tries being a sassy smartass, but then leaves and pours the drink out of a balcony, cementing that all of that is just a pretense.

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TDK was his least meaty role and he didn't get a chance to shine. In terms of his performances it might have been the worst one (TDKR>BB>TDK)... The performance in TDK might be his most nuanced, though and it's still miles above any other actor who played the part.

To me he's the third most iconic hero performer of all-time after Downey Jr who basically reinvented Iron Man in his image, and Hugh Jackman who was Wolverine for almost 20 years. Hemsworth as Thor comes close in number four, though.

Oh, and there's also Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. A character he was basically born to play... then again he was terrible in X-Men Origins and he's more of an anti-hero.


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I think I'm the only person in the world who loves his growling voice.

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Oh, you're wrong there. I love the voice, the animalistic nature. To me it's more iconic than the Conroy monotonne... and I'm from the generation who grew up on Conroy.

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I don't have much problem with the voice. I sometimes play with it when I'm by my lonesome, and say: "How can he have a better way of using that same voice and say a line like 'This city just showed you that it's full of people ready to believe in good.'?" It's tough to figure out.

I do wonder, though, if the actual mask literally caused Bale to do some of the things he did, like hang his mouth open. I bet the nose portion of the mask didn't allow him to breathe very well, which would explain what he's doing with his mouth open half the time. Because he didn't sound that bad in the first scene with Gordon at the bank in his old Batman costume.

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