To me, Bale rightfully deserved the Academy Award he got for The Fighter. Also, I feel that he should've been nominated for:
Best Actor:
American Psycho
The Machinist
Batman Begins
Rescue Dawn
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
American Hustle
Best Supporting Actor:
The Fighter
And he should've won for two other films: The Dark Knight and American Hustle.
I'm not going to talk too much about The Fighter, as he was amazing and what's been said about his performance in that film has already been said and I've already said some of it too. He got Dicky's mannerisms and look down and he embodied him to the point that family members of the real family that were watching the film be made thought he was Dicky from behind, until he turned around. So without further ado, I'll start why he should've won a couple other Oscars.
For The Dark Knight, Bale was overshadowed by the unfortunate death of the great Heath Ledger, as was everyone else in the cast. Bale should've been nominated for all three Batman films made by the great Christopher Nolan and I'll quickly explain. I do think he got better as the character as the films progressed, as we saw him grow as the character of Batman/Bruce Wayne and while I would've like him to have won for TDKR, I would've given the Oscar to Hugh Jackman for Les Misérables, since you can't tie with the Oscars regarding performances. And I would tie both Bale in TDKR and Joaquin Phoenix's performance in The Master in a strong second place. I wasn't all that inspired by Day-Lewis' portrayal of Lincoln, I thought the film was good, as well as Day-Lewis as usual, but to me the film was a little overrated.
Why should he have won for The Dark Knight and have been nominated for all three of those films is well, he made Bruce Wayne/Batman more human.
He made you feel Wayne was a tortured person that's conflicted and had to put a mask on to unleash the anger he felt at night when the criminals were out, while he played a billionaire playboy during the day. He made you care about Wayne as his playboy facade and his masked alter-ego.
And you see a progression with the character as the films go on, which to me, made you truly care about what happens with Bruce Wayne as he juggles pulling two identities at the same time, and with all the hard work Bale put into playing Wayne/Batman, I feel that he should've been nominated for all three films, as he gave depth to the character and showed vulnerability that wasn't seen by other actors played by him before.
Now why should he have won for The Dark Knight? I've got many reasons, but I'll mention a few:
He played along side Ledger's Joker very well, where they would seem to out do each other, just like Batman and the Joker would do in the comics, and there are times where I think even Bale is better than Ledger such as the interrogation scene. While in the end of that scene and the sequence that follows, yes the Joker controls the situation, but prior to that, Bale, in my opinion, owned the scene until the unfortunate destruction that follows that scene happens. He played Batman like he was on the verge of ripping The Joker's head off, which Joker is able to make Batman feel like doing at times.
Batman is a character that will do things a certain way, and Bale portrays that phenomenally, as the first thing that happens is he slams Ledgers head down on the table hard, which was done for real. All the blows Ledger took from Bale are real, as Ledger requested it to make it more believable. Bale could've convinced him otherwise, but he did beat Ledger as asked, which make the scene more intense when you see it with that fact in your head.
But he also makes you think Batman is losing control, and that Ledger is in control, but Bale plays it off like this is only what's necessary to get information out of him, which does happen, but only because the Joker sees how he's able to push Batman.
And that's important, as in the end, when Batman throws Joker off the building, he catches him with his grappling hook, and as much as Batman is pissed off, Bale is able to portray the fact that he won't kill intentionally. He killed Harvey Dent, but that was unintentional and was saving Gordon's son from Dent potentially killing him.
As Bruce Wayne, the scenes with Alfred are always great, particularly with Michael Caine playing Alfred helps a great deal. There's always a father and son kingship that is supposed to be there, and with both of those actors in those roles, it's believable. You see Wayne's struggle and conflict to balance being Bruce Wayne and Batman at the same time and Alfred is there to help as well as Luscious Fox portrayed by Morgan Freeman.
Fox helps Wayne run Wayne Enterprises and gives him the equipment he needs to be Batman. He too helps Wayne when he's struggling to be Bruce Wayne when he's supposed to be, but he wants to be Batman, so when Alfred isn't there to help Bruce balance that out, Fox acts like the moral center there. His relationship with Rachel is good, though Katie Holmes was better in my opinion. She wants to be with Bruce, but is in a relationship with Harvey Dent and doesn't know if he'd ever quit being Batman. Because she feels that Bruce couldn't leave Batman if he wanted to, she choses Harvey, so she can have a normal life, while Bruce won't know how she really felt until the next movie.
All these things with the actors involvement with Bale's Batman/Bruce Wayne shows how much he's really struggling with his personal and professional life. I didn't mention his friendship with Oldman's Commissioner Gordon, as that's similar to the previous relationships in Wayne's life only it's as Batman. But that itself is a great balance of two forces after the same goal, but have a little different take on dealing with the situation, like Gordon wants to stop corrupt crime, but do it by the book, and Batman is able to do it by the book, but bend the rules just enough so he doesn't brake any laws in the process when necessary like in the comics.
Bale portrays that so well, that it'll be difficult to see anyone play that character better than Bale has played him all those years, another thing that makes him great is he read Batman comics so that he got a good understanding of the character and take what elements were needed to play him right for the films. Now, Michael Keaton may have read some comic books for his version of The Caped Crusader, but from what I've read, Bale read a good amount so that he would be able to understand the mind of someone in that situation, that way he played the version of Batman he would be portraying so great, that he'd pull it off, which I think he did, as if you couldn't tell by reading this, but again this is all my opinion.
Like The Dark Knight, I've got many reasons why he should've won for American Hustle too, but I'll try to summarize those as good, and hopefully it'll be shorter too. I'll start by summarizing what's going on in the film, as Batman seems to be a character people are familiar with and people have already seen these movies and not everybody has seen American Hustle.
Basically Irving Rosenfeld is a con man that uses others misfortune to his personal gain. He takes money from people, as he says he can get them money that's needed for them, with that he takes a good amount of cash from them upfront and promises to get them the money they need, but doesn't ever give them the money they ask. He meets a woman named Sydney, played by Amy Adams, who he starts to have a relationship with, all the while he's married to Rosalyn, played by Jennifer Lawrence.
While they're successful at conning people together, as Sydney pretends to be British, eventually things change dramatically as Sydney and Irving are forced to work for the FBI with Richie DiMaso, played by Bradley Cooper, and they have to con and videotape politicians accepting bribes from a fraudulent Arabian company in return for various political favors, one of them is the mayor of Alantic City, Carmine Politio, played by Jeremy Renner, whom Irving becomes friends with. All in all, it's an interesting take on the ABSCAM operation that happened in the 1970s and 80s.
Now onto why Bale should've won:
Bale, as he does in all his films, immerses himself into the character he's playing. He sounds like him and acts like him during the entire filming process and doesn't brake character. He gained over 40 pounds of fat, as opposed to the 100+ pounds of muscle he gained for the Batman films, he did this as he looked at who his character was inspired by and saw he was over weight and had a comb over, which Bale sports in the film.
He got into character so well, that Robert De Niro, who has a cameo in the film, didn't recognize him and it took the director about 10 minutes of talking to De Niro that the actor was indeed Christian Bale. Now all of this, and giving Irving some much needed depth that wasn't on the page, such as the compassion he felt for Sydney, Carmine and his son. Even on occasion he shows compassion to his wife, who's completely Cuckoo.
All of this helped convincing the audience that the character was someone that we shouldn't hate, after we see him grow throughout the film. He does feel sorry for Carmine when he realizes he's going to go to jail and he cares for his son, who's Rosalyn's from another relationship, and wants what's best for him, and he's able to deal with Rosalyn's insanity and able to keep a situation under control since he's been conning ever since he was a boy, which was shown in the beginning of the film. He also loves Sydney and will do what he can to have her stay with him, as we see in the film, they're two halves of a whole, and neither is complete without the other.
I believe all of these reasons are good enough for Bale to have been nominated and win the Oscars for those two films. Now, Sean Penn and Matthew McConaughey were both good in the parts they played. Penn was good as Harvey Milk in Milk and McConaughey was good as Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club. But Bale gave more depth into his characters, that wasn't necessarily on the pages of the scripts. He embodies all of the roles he's played and continues to do so, which is important, especially when we're supposed to care about characters we're watching for about 2 hours or so.
Another reason is, IMO at least, Bale captures those characters to where we can't see anyone else playing those roles. Also, Penn's win was all a political win and McConaughey's was social win. Meaning the roles and films were politically and/or socially important and that's why they won. Bale won for The Fighter, something I was shocked to see, but pleased, as there wasn't anything politically or socially important within that film or performance. I was hoping that he'd win for American Hustle, but I wasn't holding my breath.
DBC and 12 Year's a Slave are both socially important films, meaning they're Oscar bait, as were the performances. Not to say they're bad, but you may get my point if you think about it.
Now Bruce Dern in Nebraska, didn't give a powerful performance to me. He was good, but him being nominated, makes you wonder if it was a slow year. The Wolf of Wall Street shows how people in the stock market business can get corrupted as well as the consequences that entails due to the greed of the employers and employees, and it was a good film, but if anyone was going to win anything for WOWS, in my opinion, it was going to be Jonah Hill. DiCaprio should've won back in 1994 for What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but for unknown reasons, probably to political reasons, he lost. I really think people wanted DiCaprio to win just so he would have an Oscar and that's all, which isn't a good reason. Sometimes the right person doesn't win when they should.
Like Bale lost for this film. And that's not saying they're bad in the films they're in, it's just that some of the films are made to catch Academy's eye and some, like American Hustle are made to entertain without a political or social message and with the entertainment people would get out of American Hustle, maybe the film could get some people interested in the real situation about the whole Abscam scandal.
With all this said and done, we've had a good deal of Political and Social wins at the Academy Awards, even artsy films like The Artist. Also, someone like Gary Oldman, who gave his greatest performance ever in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, lost to Jean Dujardin. Now he was good and all, but Oldman gave a performance with so much depth and complexity that was both written down on the pages and not written down, there's just no excuse for Oldman's loss. Bale has been in this situation as well, however I'm not trying to compare Oldman's performance in Soldier Spy with Bales in Hustle. I'm just saying that nowadays political, social and/or artsy films are reasons why the real BEST Actors and films don't win the awards they truly deserve to win. Most of the time.
Yes, films also get the shaft too, not just actors. Sometimes directors, producers, writers get over looked, like George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan for example, who should've won at least one Oscar for a film of theirs didn't for various reasons. I know I'm going a little off topic, but in away, this kinda ties in with Bale not winning more than one Oscar if you stop and think why the right people don't win the awards when they should've been nominated and won.
Also the Academy has given the Oscar to someone who either hasn't gotten one and they're very old and should've won a long time ago, or because of some of the other reasons I've given, but in the end, people can tend to win for stupid reasons, when the Academy has gone and given it to someone else, and the Oscar the person will win it for, well, lets just say that it might not be the performance or film that's close to being best that the person has done.
All of this has made me lost a lot of respect for the Academy long ago. It's a real shame that some actors like Peter O'Toole never got an Oscar. Yeah, he got an Honorary Academy Award, but to someone like O'Toole, and with the career he had, that's really a slap in the face. At least Bale has an Oscar, but it's a shame certain people and films don't get Oscars when they should.
Now you can disagree with me with all I've said, that's fine, but I just wanted to point out how due to Politics, Social messages and/or just plain Artsy Fartsy films, the people and movies that deserve to win, whether the film is science fiction, comedy, spy, horror, thriller or what have you, the films and performances usually won't win unless the Academy decides to actually give the award to the right person/film.
But that happens once in a blue moon, so when it happens it seems like it was an accident, and yet whenever the right person or movie does win let's all be glad it happened and bask in the fact that the right person/film can win sometimes, with politics, social and/or artsy messages aside. That can happen. Just not as often as it should.
