Speech of the Week #10

Hey guys, welcome to a new column here on YDKS Movies entitled Speech of the Week! For now on, every Monday I will post a new scene from a movie that features a speech of some sort being given. After all, there are a lot of famous scenes in film where characters give an influential speech of some sort. Then again, there are also a lot of scenes where characters give a speech and it just comes off cheesy and lame. In this section, you will see both kinds. That's right, people, I'm giving you the good and bad of film speeches all wrapped up in one great big package. I hope you all enjoy.

Since this is the 10th Speech of the Week, I figured I'd pick something kind of special to celebrate. After all, this is the first time one of my weekly columns has gotten this far (don't worry- I'm going to be bringing back Wesley's F-ed Up Movie of the Week and Super Fast Post of the Week soon... I've just been really busy). To celebrate this, I figured I'd put a speech up from a movie that is not even out on DVD yet. Yep, that's right- it's bootleg time.

If you saw the picture at the top of this article, then you should know that the speech is from The Dark Knight. The truth is, the Joker had a lot of amazing (and scary) speeches in that film. Surprisingly, a lot of them are online for viewing. I went through them all and, while it was a hard choice, I decided to go with the famous "Why so serious?" speech.

Ledger's delivery in this speech is pretty much amazing. He makes simple lines of dialogue such as "Why so serious?" truly terrifying and full of meaning. I mean, have you even really thought about that line? There's nothing really special about it on paper. However, he took it and made it mean something and gave it power. Now, it's the tag-line of the movie. Pretty crazy stuff. Ledger also manages to make every line of dialogue (and his disturbing scars origin story) much more frightening than the fact that he has a knife in between Michael Ja White's lips. This really is one of the most intense scenes I've seen in a movie. I can remember how tense the audience was in the midnight showing when this happened.

Any ways, feel free to relive this great scene and speech below. And be sure to pick up The Dark Knight on DVD or Blu-ray December 9th.

Here's a full transcript of the speech:

"You wanna know how I got these scars? My father...was...a drinker, and a fiend. And one night, he goes off craaazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that. Not...one...bit. So...me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me...and he says..."Why so serious?". He comes at me with the knife..."Why so serious?!" Sticks the blade in my mouth..."Let’s put a smile on that face!"...aaaand...why so serious?"