Heath Ledger’s Most Iconic Movie Hits Netflix’s Top 10

Wanna know how Heath Ledger topped these charts?

Ledger’s most iconic role is back in the hearts and minds of Netflix subscribers, as The Dark Knight has hit #8 on the streamer’s top 10 movie charts.

The 2008 movie was a watershed moment for superhero flicks, as it was the first of its kind to receive major awards from the Oscars and the Golden Globes. A large part of that is thanks to Ledger’s titanic performance as the antagonist, the Joker.

In the film, the vigilante Batman (played by Christian Bale) joins up with police commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to rid Gotham City of organized crime, but their plans are continually thwarted by the Joker, who gives Batman a series of moral tests to prove just how far he’s willing to go to save the city he loves.

An actor as big as Ledger picking a role like Joker feels trite and uninteresting today with how many superhero movies we’ve gotten in the last decade, but at the time the move felt earth-shattering. Initially, director Christopher Nolan was criticized for choosing Ledger to play the Clown Prince of Crime; now, his performance in The Dark Knight is widely regarded as the best in any superhero movie, full-stop.

Ledger died from an accidental prescription drug overdose in January 2008, just months before the movie released, which created a public fervor to see his final role on-screen. Fans weren’t disappointed, as the movie flat-out wouldn’t work without him.