Pro Acting Coach Breaks Down 12 Batman Villain Performances | Good & Bad Acting

there wasn't one moment in this story where i did not believe joaquin phoenix had real pain hello ladies and gentlemen my name is anthony gilardi i am an acting coach in los angeles california i am also a big batman fan and today we will be discussing batman villains what worked and what simply did not work among the criteria that we're going to be looking for today is a solid motive the origin the backstory of the character the humanity of the character the mannerisms from what i call stick okay let's go [Music] there's this new law if you're a bad enough bad guy to stamp terrorist on your jacket this is an exposition scene which means that the main character in this case joker in this moment needs to be listening they send you to this swamp in black site i feel that leto got so caught up with being the joker he forgot the simple techniques of what is my objective what do i need that is the humanity of every character in every scene and right here i just saw a performance that is rudderless and it could have been solved by simply listening instead of external behavior in this moment he just didn't make any clear decisions am i going to be crazy in a menacing way am i going to be crazy in a playful way it just seems like he's altering his voice too much and trying different things ah he's gonna be my friend the indecisiveness of leto's voice here seems more like it's being worked out in front of us but his audience shouldn't be involved in that process what are you gonna do are you gonna kill me mr j what i don't even believe that she is even scared in this moment they are in two different moments i'm not gonna kill you i'm just gonna hurt you really really bad and this is the birth of this relationship a dr frankenstein type of moment where dr frankenstein is creating in his mind a perfect human being to be his companion this moment should have been in that kind of vein instead of a menacing diabolical moment are you sweet talking me i know about your experiments with the inmates of your nut house if you know the comics the origin of the scarecrow then this is a common trait for batman villains when they were younger they were bullied and they literally created a monster but killian does a great job of creating the buttons and the triggers and you could see it with his reactions i own the muscle in this town now his body really doesn't move that much but his eyes change his breathing patterns change as soon as he hears i own the muscle of this town don't forget now the muscle of this town is what bullied me and what created who i am today and he knows there's only one thing left to do would you like to see my mask pay attention to the child-like manner that he says it in probably not very frightening to a guy like you he's here oh the batman the cadence to his voice has changed he is in a comfortable environment what do we do what anyone does when a prowler comes around call the police he knows that this is his turf he's having fun so we could just see even though he's not wearing the scarecrow mask we could see that he right now is the scarecrow but the batman has a talent for disruption he's almost like mocking him by saying the batman that way the batman he doesn't seem scared he's inviting him into his domain what have you been doing here so now you have batman using his scarecrow poison against him and at some point you could actually see him just letting go and giving in his eyes stop bulging so much his breathing changes dr green isn't here right now this is a man that has mastered the art of fear at his most fearful moment he accepts it because fear is part of his identity again another beautiful moment where he uses his eyes to tell the story but if you'd like to make an appointment this is batman catwoman speak of the angel i know it was the 1960s this show was designed to be campy and for kids what she did with the genre that she was working with was genius she's using very simple but effective stick her mannerisms everything she does with her fingers the third twosome arrive here to rescue their precious ally batgirl when she's explaining to her henchmen her evil plot which she's very passionate about her embodiment of catwoman is coming out in her speech batman has been invited by queen bess for a private audience at three o'clock the way she's using her s's and her p's and her ours queen best private audience perfectly foolproof it's perfectly uh of course i can't do it but she does it brilliantly here we who enforce the law would gladly lay down our lives for it she's squinting her eyes to make them look more cat-like and then she is opening her eyes when she listens to batgirl say something that she just doesn't like it shows that she is listening it shows her passion it seems like she believes that she is catwoman i'll try to pull the wool over our eye slips now would i do a thing like that [Music] i am nature's arm her theory if i am born as poison ivy i have to do very little to make sure that i show the world who i am i just don't feel like you need to break stuff and use your voice and raise your arms to show that you are empowered it should come from within help i am mother nature now i know that in this story everybody is going big and they kind of wanted it to be like a campy version of batman much like the tv series now if you're gonna make a choice that i'm gonna destroy this place you're either gonna go big or you're not gonna go big you can't half-heartedly break things your audience is going to question why are you breaking things if you have a purpose and you execute then we won't even ask that question sorry my vines have a crush on catchphrase it's forced in now that's not the actor's fault that those are the lines in the script gotta go so many people to kill so little time but you either believe what you're saying or you don't believe i feel with uma thurman's skills and talent she could have made even a a cheesy line sound real and cool you're about to become compost i understand that the action sequences are not the actor's fault but the behavior of being in battle is on the actor i don't see any kind of confidence danger pain i just don't believe that these two characters are in battle curses you can call me joker the reveal is very important jack understands that his character has to go big here and while he's taking off his hat he has his eyebrows raised his eyes widening very much like eartha kitt did in catwoman but this one's a little bit more maniacal and as you can see i'm a lot happier in this moment he's letting his facial expressions do the acting for him jack is a genius at that he's known for that it's perfect casting when you have defeated somebody that has been keeping you down you celebrate and jack celebrates here but the thing that i love about what he's bringing here is the liberating madness and that's something that was never in the tv shows this is something that believe it or not adds humanity to the character we all wish that we could just go mad and say and do whatever we want this joker sets the bar for anybody that wants to play joker from this point on you ever dance with the devil in the veil moonlight what every time i put this on somebody dies and she's using her heritage stick that a lot of the mannerisms that we saw with jack nicholson a lot of the mannerisms that we saw with earth are kit but she's using them as a tool just like they did something tells me a whole lot of people are about to die the way she's like chewing and snapping her gum the way she says the word die die as if it's like a good thing in her world everybody else around her the word die is a good thing in their world too it is established that harley quinn has allies and you could tell that she's going to have fun working with her allies the character needs to be unique so her entrances and her exits need to be specific now she kicks these monsters butts and she does it in a very very cool way handles her business her exit has to be just as powerful hey guys come on let's go and that's it the anti-catchphrase it really caters towards the genre it's called the mislead by her being casual about it it's a power move this moment defines her as a powerful character even more than when she destroyed her enemies love your perfume what is that the scent of death tragic irony or poetic justice if you are a purist like i am with the comics the penguin character is a very internal emotional character and danny plays penguin too much of a monster this is all just a bad dream you're at home in bed he is using the attention to detail that we saw a lot of the other villains use emphasizing certain words and in this case he's emphasizing like the p sounds and the b sounds what you put in your toilet i place on my mantle baby but he's doing it in a way that his objective is not human he's saying it so he just so he could spit out the the green slobber and make him look more menacing and more like a monster i think this image says it all at least give them a noble death and a respectful death as penguin is dying and he's approaching our hero i never for one second felt like batman was in real danger they wanted this gothic death but because it just looks ridiculous in so many ways it turned more comical and danny runs with it i think that he could have maintained a lot more humanity there wasn't one moment in this story where i did not believe joaquin phoenix had real pain the external mannerisms all come from a visceral place the way he looks down and up in that uncertainty that laugh i get that it's coming from an involuntary place from his gut and it's so much more powerful that way i take my hat off to todd phillips the director phillips understood that if i just let joakim do his thing he could improvise a beautiful moment by using his body you see he comes in it's almost like a caterpillar coming into a cocoon his posture is bad his muscles are tense starts to metamorphosize his gait slows down his posture gets a little bit better he lets go he's able to look at himself in the mirror for the first time and see his true self and you could just see that he just marvels at the results and he could take up as much space as he wants yes you could call it madness but you could see that it is liberating him and i'll tell you this not everyone is awful me he does have a gun on him but you get the sense that he's not quite sure yet how this moment is going to turn out so he's listening and his eyes are telling the story about how he's processing what he's hearing i'm awful oh yeah how am i awful playing my video and at this point the voice is very childlike he's whispering now a huge piece of the puzzle with this joker is not knowing who his father is and you could tell that he has latched on to murray as a male figure even though he only saw him on tv in his eyes you could see the disappointment that could only be described as a son being disappointed in his father it was so clear where his day-to-day pain lied he's got us like hook line and sinker from the very beginning you're beautiful are you yesterday's news bruce yes yes yes bruce old man we need to see the evolution of edward nigma here before edward enigma becomes riddler i could see that kind of behavior when he's around bruce wayne but in this moment we need to see the change he's still behaving the way he used to behave he's still insecure and doesn't have the confidence that he has gained through his transformation the press were just wondering what it feels like to be outsold outclassed about quaff now i like what he's motivated by i see a man that is motivated by envy and pride he's trying to emulate bruce wayne but if you're trying to emulate somebody then emulate them and prove to them how far you have come so your face needs to be a lot more still now i know that jim carrey is a very animated actor to begin with that's why i think we're seeing too much jim carrey and just by relaxing his face it would have added the humanity to the moment and told the story better and become gotham's cleverest carbon-based life form your voice your facial tics your mannerisms your body language should tell the story without it being too theatrical you could put your unique stamp on it without going too big who is the attention to detail even down to the laugh is not one note he starts to laugh and then he starts to grunt almost like he's mocking human laughter i thought my jokes were bad christopher nolan the director of this film he said that heath ledger rarely idolizes ventriloquist and how creepy the ventriloquist dummy really is the way that it is mechanical and almost being like manipulated by a higher power and you could see that he incorporated a lot of those mannerisms into the character just by the way he walks just by the noises and the sounds that come out of his mouth we are tonight's entertainment the way he moves around his eyes the way he moves his mouth and his jaw you remind me of my father i hated my father his actions make you think that he's making up these stories as he goes but he does a really good job of using his voice in a very powerful way almost like a musical instrument he changes his pitch and he changes his cadence it has an unpredictable effect hello beautiful and you are beautiful well you look nervous this joker is very rough around the edges and not polished if we go back and watch that walk his head is tilted his spine is tilted even his posture is chaotic and when it comes down to his plot he doesn't want money he just wants chaos the subtle mannerisms like the licking of his lips that cause attention to the origin of the joker he's telling the person that he's speaking to i'm gonna give you permission to look at my scars don't look away because he knows that that is the core of his origin i don't want to kill you this right here is a clinic on storytelling joker is batman's nemesis you have to learn something from your nemesis and that is what we see right here watch the the excitement in heath ledger's eyes no you you complete me same thing with his body language he's leaning in he really wants to get food to batman you're garbage who kills for money don't talk like one of them you're not to them you're just a freak he's actually using inflection to add different subtext you see their morals their code when he says their code he creates subtext what he really means and how he really feels about these things he very clearly is saying you're not talking to one of these thugs that you put in archive asylum you're talking to me this moment pretty much sums up everything that we talk about see i'm not a monster i'm just ahead of the curve meow this is a very good cat woman reveal she looks at penguin and batman almost like in a disappointing way that disappointing look along with the way she delivers the line meow kind of makes it look like she's better than them she's cooler than them she doesn't even belong here these are the people that i'm gonna fight and she really tells that story in one word meow still alive now i understand that she's getting shot i think that she should have stood up used her voice got her power back i don't like this the the waddle towards him the laugh just could have been done in a more powerful way we see too much pleading and begging in her eyes don't forget catwoman is going to persevere through this resilient like a cat and i don't see that in this moment and her voice in her eyes and her tone and in her posture we saw too much selena kyle and not enough catwoman a lot of the blame has to go to the storyteller themselves in this case tim burton i feel that it will be more powerful for her to rise up in this moment than to make it look like she's collapsing within a kiss santa claus oh you think darkness is your ally you merely adopted the dark i was born in it you know you hear stories about how he bulked up and to be honest anybody could do that what separates the good actors from the great actors are the way they use their body now watch the way he's walking around look at his posture his body language tells us he feels comfortable here he's been in the darkness his entire life he even turns his back a few times on batman it's a very cool way to deliver exposition and show the origin of his character i didn't see the light until i was already a man but then it was nothing to me and that eruption right there it's a brilliant move by tom hardy i'm in charge do you feel in charge he didn't come over to him and put his hand on his shoulder in a very menacing way squeezing his shoulder he's just and and actually a very very delicate almost nurturing manner and his hand looks like it's almost gonna caress his face and you could put yourself in the other guy's shoes it's like what is happening is he gonna kill me is he gonna kiss me it just sucks you in take control if you really listen closely to bane's voice there's a lot of moments where it looks like like he's out of breath and he's catching his breath now we come here about this conquerors and at the first sign of interference from the outside world now tom hardy incorporated that into his character because he wanted to show his pain it shows a lot of humanity and it shows his origin and he does it without explaining it he does it through the subtleties of his actions that's a lovely lovely voice there are so many batman villains we can't get to all them but i want to give some shout outs i want to give a special honorable mention shout out to burgess meredith as the penguin in the tv show mark hamill plays the voice of joker in the animated series liam neeson for razar ghoul i think he did a great job i also want to give a very dishonorable mention to uma thurman's henchman bane arnold schwarzenegger's mr freeze tommy lee jones did not work ali is going to have her work cut off for her editing this because there's a lot of stuff

Channel: Insider

Views: 3,965,103

Keywords: Insider, ACTING, movies, movies insider, batman, villain, villian, act, movie, film, hollywood, superhero, gotham, bruce wayne, performance, react, reacting, breaking down, rating

Id: VRtTz7w_iDY

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020