As moviegoers and critics brace for the flood of “serious” Oscar fare that hits theaters each December, there’s one Oscar contender that’s just sitting back and waiting to hit with the big guns. The Dark Knight is quietly hovering over the Oscar race at the moment, but with a series of full-page ads in Variety last week, is beginning to launch an Oscar campaign that may very well end up rewarding the best comic book movie of all time.
First Showing picked up on the ads, which included front and back covers dedicated to Heath Ledger’s Best Supporting Actor campaign as well as other ads touting the movie as a whole. Awards Daily, the indispensable Oscar watching site, posted high-res version of the images; we’ve posted smaller versions of below.
For Your Consideration ads, as annoying as they may become over time, are often gorgeous in their own right, picking some of the most striking images from the film that we haven’t seen over and over. The shot of the Joker from behind, for example—it’s the first time we see him in the film, but we don’t know it’s him until the end of the scene, and you might not even know it until the second viewing. But once you know it, the body language is so singular, it couldn’t be anyone but Heath Ledger there. Even though it doesn’t show his face, it’s a powerful reminder of how unbelievable that performance was.
Check out the images below, and be amazed as you manage to be shown yet another angle of The Dark Knight the most-seen and most-talked-about movie of the year.
