Catwoman as a Cougar? 
I do agree with the producers decision to not try to recreate the Joker with a new actor so soon. Whether or not you think Ledger’s portrayal was great, the common perception with fans is that it was and any other attempt at the character will be torn apart by unfair criticism based on how people feel about Heath Ledger’s acting rather then what appears on the screen. Let the memory fade and the scars associated with is death heal and then bring out the Joker again.
Oh, HELLS yes. And ditto for Michael C Hall as the Riddler, minus the “bunk” thing.
If they do another Catwoman I’d like to see it played as a character who can literally punch her weight rather than as yet another sex kitten with a few lethal nail extensions who would snap in a stiff breeze. I’d prefer something more Xena-esque – all that parkour ought to grow a few muscles on a person. I can’t think of any suitable actresses off the top of my head though.
Zoe Bell (who I personally also think is smoking hot)?
And I’d like them to grab someone who’s not really a Bat-baddy, but might be a nod/gateway to the rest of the DCU. Maybe Deathstroke or Deadshot. The mob wants to get rid of the Bat and the crazies? Hire a professional.
As for the Riddler, I’d LOVE to see David Tennant do it. No reason he has to be an American, is there? I swear I’ve seen a fake movie poster with him playing this role. Or I thought they were building up that TV reporter to be the Riddler after his brush with the “chaos” of the Joker.
I think Catwoman has been an integral enough part of every Batman universe so far that Nolan almost has to include her at some point. If done well, it could be great.
As long as it isn’t Megan Fox.
And, in response to that link, absolutely no to Johnny Depp. After Willy Wonka and the Mad Hatter, playing the Riddler would be one bizarre weirdo too far.
I agree, but of the villains not yet done–once you get past Catwoman–start to get more and more fantastic (that outfit and the right actress filling it will forgive a lot of incongruities). So it’s hard to predict how they will avoid this problem.
The Riddler IMO is pushing it; he’s clearly no physical match for TDK so his puzzles have to be unbelievably elaborate a la those ridiculous “Saw” pictures. However that mismatch can also be exploited for serious dramatic advantage, so it’s probably do-able. Nevertheless, once you get to The Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Clock King, and Poison Ivy, it will take a lot of work to maintain even a thin veneer of realism.
I’d rather see Talia Al Ghul. Ties into the first movie. If they want to throw in Catwoman, then cool. It gives us a chance to see Bruce Wayne struggle with also being Batman. He was shaken to the core from the events in TDK.
I don’t mean to pick on CJJ here in particular, but I’ve seen this argument in a number of places and I just don’t get it. The Nolan Batman movies have a veneer of verisimilitude, but they’re not realistic and the villains that have been chosen thus far have all been adapted to Nolan’s style. The first movie has Ras’ Al’Ghul, who in the comics is an immortal who dabbles in magic. The only thing they really kept was ‘leader of an international terrorist group’ angle and his distinctive facial hair.
Before TDK came out I remember people arguing that the Joker didn’t fit Nolan’s universe. He’s too big, too colorful, too campy, too over the top. It’s like people expected Nolan to resurrect Cesar Romero and cast him in the role. 
I can understand where the fear came from because that is one possible interpretation of the character, but there are others that better fit Nolan’s style and I figured that would be the angle he’d take with it. The modern Joker is essentially a psychopath in a purple suit, but more importantly he’s Batman’s thematic foil. Batman is an ordinary man attempting to impose order on his world through hardwork and rationality. The Joker is an agent of chaos, a force of nature trying to prove to Batman that his mission in life is doomed to failure. Ledger’s Joker even outlines this dynamic in the scene in the hospital when he’s talking to Harvey.
Most of the villains in the rogues gallery have this core of ‘reality’ about them that they can be stripped down to and then built back up.
Cast Phillip Seymour Hoffman and give him a monocle and an umbrella and make him absolutely ruthless. You’ve got the Penguin.
The Riddler is a genius who’s obsessed with puzzles and is severely egocentric. How many real life examples do we have of murderers and criminals taunting police with hand written letters because they think they’re smarter than everyone else? That’s your Riddler blueprint.
Poison Ivy is a femme fatale, biochemist, and eco-terrorist who’s obsessed with poisons and toxins.
Catwoman is an extremely agile cat burglar who happens to fall in love with Batman. (I don’t think Selina would be a straight up villain at any rate. She’d be Bruce’s replacement love interest and she’d be slotted in the secondary role like Scarecrow and Two-Face were.)
The Mad Hatter is a psychologist and a pedophile who’s obsessed with brain washing techniques and Lewis Carrol.
And those are just the better known ones. There are also many villains who would fit fine in Nolan’s movies, with just a little tinkering, who aren’t quite as famous, such as Black Mask (another crime boss), Talia (Ra’s Al’Ghul’s daughter), Zsasz (had a cameo in the first movie), Hugo Strange (psychologist who discovers Bruce’s identity and attempts to profit from it), or even Hush, (a newer villain and a childhood friend of Bruce’s who blames Thomas Wayne for his own parent’s deaths.)
There are villains who would be difficult to adapt, (Clayface, Croc, Freeze, Man-Bat…) but those are the ones who are defined by their powers and they’re more the exception than the rule.
I was thinking this just a few days ago - the Riddler has gotten pretty short shrift from fans and writers in recent years for being the guy who practically begs to be caught in every crime he commits, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Narcissstic psychopaths who taunt the police and make them jump through hoops to prove their own superiority are plenty scary - Zodiac, the Beltway Snipers, the Unabomber, etc.
Concur. The problem with the Riddler has always been that the riddles the writers concoct for him are at about a 3rd-grade level of difficulty. To challenge the world’s greatest detective, they should be at approximately this level of difficulty.
I personally think they should be deceptively simple. The first few should be easy, but they’re a setup. But it turns out that, if you take them all together, and do X to them, it actually does tell you what he is doing. But is that a setup, too?
There were a few in the Animated Series that worked fairly well. Very basic and easy to figure out, or so they appeared. Then Batman would walk right into a death trap, because the simple answer was not the real answer.
The Penguin, the Riddler, and Catwoman are perfect for the Nolanverse.
Completely normal people, save for their monomanias. No superpowers. No weird deformities (normally - sometimes the Burton Penguin reappears).
*Penguin *- overweight crime lord with a penchant for formal wear, and an obsession with birds and umbrellas.
Riddler - a brilliant man who loves puzzles, and indulges himself by pitting himself against the cops and the Batman in a riddle-based battle of wits.
Catwoman - a burglar with a cat obsession, and a crush on Batman.
Other Batman villains who work without major problems:
Victor Zsasz - his self-mutilation is a little unusual, but not really weird.
Hugo Strange - ignore his first few appearances, and concentrate on his obsession with Batman’s civilian identity, and his manipulative psychological tricks.
Black Mask - revert to the original, where the mask was really a mask, or use the current version, where the Black Mask is an MPD case manipulated by Strange. The mask-as-face could even work, if played right.
Some who are workable with minor alterations:
Poison Ivy - get rid of the poison blood, and the plant manipulation, have her use plant-based drugs and poisons, delivered by lipstick, to make men pliable, or kill them.
Bane - get rid of the Venom (maybe replace it with steroids or a stimulant), tone down his strength level, and redesign his costume a bit, and you’re golden. The stimulant version even allows a variant on the trick Batman typically used against Bane when he was using Venom - in the original, he cut off the Venom supply, with a stimulant, he could induce an overdose.
Clayface - Go with the Karlo version, who was simply a master of disguise. No actual shapeshifting, engulfing people, or melting people. In this category only because those that are familiar with him are generally more familiar with the later, powered, versions - primarily Hagen.
Firefly - get rid of the flying, make his costume a bit bulkier to allow for larger tanks of incendiary material, and he’s a simple costumed arsonist.
Calculator - go with the recent version of an information-broker to the underworld.
Some who could work without major alterations, if played right:
Mad Hatter - his mind control devices aren’t really far out in relation to Ra’s’s microwave device from the first one. Maybe make them a bit bigger.
Killer Croc - Don’t go with the actual crocodilian version, and depending how the makeup is done, his scaling could be realistic, but still evoke crocodiles.
Ventriloquist - a fairly daft gimmick, but it has the potential to work, even in the grittier Nolanverse - just don’t play the ‘is Scarface real?’ card.
Wouldn’t work, or would be the character in name only:
Mr Freeze, Man-Bat, The Clock King, (all powered to the point that toning them down would make them completely not the same character),* The Condiment King* (no way to not make him ridiculous), Killer Moth (the only way anybody’s managed to make him not-ridiculous makes him not nearly realistic enough).
Not at all a comprehensive list of Batman villains, or even the ones I know and like - just the ones I have strong ideas on how they’d fit into the Nolanverse.
Yeah, and for a fictional example, I could see something like the crimes in Seven be reworked to be the Riddler. The Joker graphic novel I mentioned earlier in this thread had several villians adapted for the Nolan universe including the Riddler, the Penguin and Killer Croc (yes Killer Croc) and all of them would have worked fine on screen.
Eh, I don’t think a gimpy Kid Rock would work as an actual Riddler. He worked in the Joker GN, but he’s…not really Riddler.
True, there are many Jokers, and so the Cesar Romero, the Mark Hamill and the Jack N. version all are valid. Other than versions put out AFTER the film, there was nothing at all like Ledgers version.
wiki *"In the 2008 film The Dark Knight, the Joker is portrayed by Heath Ledger, who told Sarah Lyall of New York Times that he viewed that film’s version of the character as a “psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.”[61] In this film, he is a crime boss targeting mob banks, whom Gotham’s Mafia families reluctantly hire to kill Batman (Christian Bale) after he brazenly offers them his services. It is gradually revealed that he desires to upset social order through crime and he comes to define himself by his battle with Batman.
Costume designer Lindy Hemming described the Joker’s look as being based around his personality, in that “he doesn’t care about himself at all.” She avoided his design being vagrant, but nonetheless it is “scruffier, grungier and therefore when you see him move, he’s slightly twitchier or edgy.”[62] Unlike most incarnations, where his appearance is a result of chemical bleaching, this Joker sports a Glasgow smile, and accentuates it through unevenly applied white, black, and red make-up (he also has dyed green hair). During the course of the film, he tells conflicting stories about how he acquired the scars, which involve child abuse and self-mutilation. One of his stories includes his father, who, according to him, “was a drinker and a fiend”.
Unlike the previous film and comic-book depictions of the Joker, this one eschews gag-based weapons common to the character, in favor of knives, firearms, and an array of explosive devices.
*
So, backstory new, looks completely new and completely un-Joker-like, and no gag based weapons or even anything like a joke.
You have to separate the great performance Ledger gave from the film’s poor depiction (much of which was the fault of the Costume designer and the writers). I know, It’s hard to do. But Arnold gave a great performance as a character who just happened to be named Conan, but was a terrible depiction of Conan.
I don’t think Heath Ledger’s Joker was created out of whole cloth for the movie. It owed a lot to the depiction of the Joker in the graphic novel Batman:The Killing Joke. Similar to the book the Joker in the movie was obsessed with showing the world that anyone could be turned into a psychopath given the right circumstances. The character also tends to give different stories about how he came to be. And, in both The Killing Joke and Dark Knight he talks about how he and Batman are fated to fight over and over again.
The design of the character might be new and more realistic, given the nature of this series of movies. The weapons he uses also have a heavy coat of realism applied to them. In spite of these changes Ledger’s portrayal hews closely to the established comic book character. He shows a psychopathic sense of humor throughout the movie with one liners before and after gruesome murders. His motivations and actions are also consistent with the insane clown depicted in the comic book over the years.
A better versionof a fake Tennant/Riddler poster.
YES! That was the one I saw. And I’d love to see Killer Croc on the big screen. One urban legend vs. another…
See
Note that the Joker is still the natty well dressed Joker we have seen for 60 years, except for this one movie. He has the same sense of humor- except for this one movie… The Joker here has a similar origin story- falling into a vat of chemicals, caused indirectly by the Batman- more or less the same- except for this one movie. Other than the idea of “the world is inherently insane” nothing in Batman:The Killing Joke is at all like the movie, and that idea has appeared many times before.
Yes, over the years since 2008. (since the movie)
Fanwank it as you will, it’s just about the worst possible depiction of the Joker. It’s true that Heath Ledge was fabulous, but that doesn’t make the depiction correct.
