‘Joker’ Leads With 11 Oscar Nominations and Infinitely More Tattoos Than Any Other Film

The 2020 Academy Award nominations came out this morning and to the surprise of some, but not to those of us here at Inked, “Joker” dominated the proceedings by scoring 11 nominations, more than any other film. In addition to the nomination for best picture, Todd Phillips earned the nomination for Best Director and Joaquin Phoenix was nominated for Best Actor. 

While the nominations are made by members of the Academy of Motion Pictures, sometimes you can get an idea of what films are going to be honored based on public opinion. In other words, a movie can have so much traction among filmgoers that it can ride that wave of popularity to a ton of nominations. Think back to “Titanic” for a great example of this. We might be seeing the same thing this year with “Joker.” 

Here at Inked, we’re used to seeing tattoos from popular films. We don’t know if we’ve ever seen such an explosion of tattoos all inspired by one particular film. Maybe this is a new trend, as we’ve also seen a ton of tattoos of “The Child” from “The Mandalorian.” But even when compared to Baby Yoda, we’ve seen way more tattoos of Phoenix as Arthur Fleck than any other film character in recent memory. 

While his performance was amazing, and the film is decent (Full disclosure: I didn’t like it much, but everyone else in the Inked office tells me I’m an idiot), it’s still shocking to see so many tattoos of Phoenix’s Joker, especially when compared to the number of tattoos featuring Heath Ledger’s take on the iconic villain. It must just be that it’s a different time, because it took very little time for there to be more amazing tattoos of Phoenix than Ledger. 

We’ll have to wait until Feb. 9 to find out who the winners are. If tattoo shops had a vote, I think we know who is going to win Best Actor.