POLL: Villain Round-up: Sept. 5, 2008

I may be the only comic book fan of this opinion, but I'd love to see Nolan's take on the Mad Hatter. The mind-control schtick would play well with Nolan's psycho-thriller expertise, and, if recent video games and comic books have taught us anything, Alice in Wonderland imagery can be pretty darned creepy. Hatter is, I think, a perfect fit for this particular Batman franchise.

I wouldn't mind seeing Catwoman included, since I can't say no to a lady thief in black vinyl, but I don't think she could carry a movie in Nolan's style as the central villain.

I can say more about who I really don't think it will be.

I'm pretty sure it won't be Two-Face... Nobody stays dead in comics, but in the relatively small number of installments per comic-licensed movie series they do have that luxury.

It had godamn well better not be the Joker or there will be Ledgerites rioting in the streets.

Mr. Freeze seems horribly out of the Dark Knight series' style; the whole magic-freeze-ray/head-in-a-fishbowl thing would just not work, and he isn't much of a character without that schtick.

Odds are quite good for a Catwoman b-plot, but she'd never be the main attraction for the simple reason that she's to sympathetic, skirts too close to the edge of being a good guy, and thinks too small- theft instead of mass terror and destruction. She won't threaten all of Gotham like the starring villain has to to really drive a feature film.

That would leave either Penguin or Riddler of the bunch above... Either would work. I'd love to see the Penguin as a hyper-powerful, chessmaster kind of mob boss or the Riddler as a haunting portrait of criminal dementia.

Of course, in the end I'm sure whoever it actually is will blindside us. Who guessed Ra's al Ghul would be the alpha villain of Begins before it released? ;)

(Who was, by the way, offed in a vastly more ambigous manner than Harvey...)

What /really/ interests me, by the way, isn't so much the next villain as whether we'll see any of the Bat Family in this series.

I saw an interview with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe around the time of "3:10 to Yuma" premiering and Christian said that he wouldn't do a movie with "bloody Robin". I don't know how serious he was due to Russell teasing him about having a teenage boy in tights as his sidekick.

I read a couple weeks ago, they are looking to bring Cher onboard for catwoman as an older vamp type catwoman and they apparantly lined up Johnny Depp for the Riddler. It could be just early gossip, but who knows. Unfortunately I can't find the article I read that in.

Ugh. I heard the Cher rumor, too, and I can only hope that it's a vicious lie. There's no way that casting like that could spell success for the movie.

What is she? Seventy-five... eighty years old? She can't play Catwoman. She's more suited to play a cat lady.