Let's Talk Batman
The third of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, The Dark Knight Rises (terrible title) is in pre-production, and one of the few clues we’ve been given to its contents are that The Riddler will not be the villain, which is fine: Riddler’s just a third-tier Joker wannabe.
Who does that leave us for what will surely be the final Batman film of the Christopher Nolan era?
Well:
The return of Ra’s al Ghul? Ra’s’s whole shtick is that he returns from the dead. Would be interesting to see a revived Ra’s pulling the strings again.
Catwoman? A possibility. It would be nice to see Selina Kyle’s actual backstory get some love in a major Batman movie, but I doubt Nolan would want to go down that well-travelled Bat-romance path again.
Mad Hatter? Tone down the overt Carroll references and you have a great villain. Mind control is a great gimmick that would play into a lot of Nolan’s pet themes. Think about it.
Clayface? Again, a man who can look like anybody? Nolan would have a field day with this concept, though he would of course play down the cartoony nature of Clayface’s “true” form.
Nolan proved his willingness to go obscure for the first movie (only the most die-hard Batfans even know who Ra’s al Ghul is). Now that the big guy (Joker) is out of the way, he’s free to dig deep into the rogues’ gallery to find somebody who will really mess with Batman’s head. I would love to see a quick montage: Batman cleaning the streets of the new costumed menace: Scarface, Poison Ivy, a Harley Quinn appearance for the fans…just some quick snippets of Batman filling the cells of Arkham Asylum.
But who for the main baddie? My suggestion: reach deep back into Batman’s history to pluck out Professor Hugo Strange. Read his Wikipedia page. This guy’s insane, a psychological mastermind, and possesses exactly the skills necessary to wreck Batman’s mind. I can see him working excellently in a Nolan movie, perhaps moving around some other villains (Mad Hatter goes here) to destroy our hero’s sanity.
There’s my two cents, anyway.
We’ll see who we get in a couple years.
