I didn’t think so. Sure, she didn’t emote a whole lot, but I don’t think Selina Kyle would be one to be very emotional. She was supposed to be tough from having lived on the streets her whole life. What do you think she should have done better?
The actress and the character as written didn’t show a hint of living on the streets toughness, she seemed more like she was just spouting empty lines. I didn’t want someone overly emotional, but I should have at least felt like she cared about the stuff she said. She just seemed like an afterthought really, possibly a consequence of having two major female characters.
They just had no chemistry at all, there was no sense of the back and forth teasing tension I’m used to with Batman and Catwoman. I never felt like she was bending Batmans rigid moral sense, or even convincing him.
Agreed. She was an empty character, there as a placeholder to say the things that the director needed to be said.
That’s a function of the way they characterized Batman in this movie. It had nothing to do with Hathaway.
Agreed there. The character seemed to exist solely to give the rank-and-file audience a Batman “villain” they could recognize and to put Anne Hathaway in a series of tight outfits. Not that that isn’t a noble goal in its own right but the Catwoman character could have easily been written out of the script with no loss to the story.
Buuuut, in Knightfall, she ran around with Bane until she decided to fly to Italy or wherever. The police just happened to catch her at the airport in the movie version.
It is probable it was not Hathaway’s fault, but the writing and directing. Whatever the issue that was a horrible Catwoman.
you do know that . . . ah . . . that the batman is . . . ya know . . . ahhh fiction, right??
Thank you for that very useful contribution.
Unfortunately, it’s not; it’s disc only. I’d definitely second the recommendation though, if only for Mark Hamill’s Joker - his voicing defines the character for me, and always has. I grew up watching the show, so I might be a bit biased, but I’d rank his portrayal above Heath Ledger’s.
It’s a bit more old-school Batman, however. Robin is part of the series and the Joker is a bit more insane and cartoony (think Nicholson rather than Ledger), but it’s certainly not as ridiculous as Adam West’s Batman (which I still love).
This is the quintessential example of threadshitting.
Do not do this again – threadshitting is a warnable offense.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
TAS used Tim Drake, as opposed to Dick Grayson, IIRC. Drake is a much better Robin.
I know Year One is on Netflix. Watch it, then watch Begins. I’m not sure if The Dark Knight Returns is on Netflix, but it’s also pretty good. The book are better though.
There’s definitely incentive for the rich to stay rich, but not to keep everyone else poor. In fact, there’s a DISincentive for that. If everyone else is poor, no one can afford to buy the stuff the rich person sells or produces.
Rich people just want to have more than the average Joe—they don’t care if the average Joe is upper middle class or lower, and they certainly don’t want him poor.
TAS used both. A college age Dick early on, and a younger Tim later (with Dick switching to Nightwing).
I’m not a super avid comic reader, but I’ve seen Catwoman portrayed three times (Returns, The Animated Series, and Rises) in film/TV. And in each one, she talks a good game about how tough she is and how in tune with the regular folks she is, but in each one she’s always living a pretty good life herself (obviously, this is less true of Returns than the others). In The Animated Series she was portrayed as just a few rungs below Bruce on the wealth scale.
Just like there’s no definitive Batman, there’s no definitive Catwoman. But Hathaway’s Catwoman showed portions of the Catwomen I’ve seen before.
Thanks, Twix.
Anyway, I like these discussions, which is why I start them. When I watched Watchmen and made a thread about it, about a zillion points were raised that finally got me to read the comic itself, which made me like it much better (the movie was frankly terrible).
So…thanks. 
What the 1989 Burton Batman did best was create a Gotham that seemed vaguely fantastic and other worldly. The Nolan Batmans were lacking this attribute, and it made the entire concept of Batman seem a bit silly and pointless.
It seems to me that people are disappointed in Batman, because Bane told them exactly what they wanted to hear. “It’s not your fault that you’re poor! Those [del]royalist[/del], um, [del]bourgeois[/del], um, [del]Jewish[/del], um, 1%er bankers are conspiring against you!”
Wayne Enterprises is an autonomous collective of people, working communally to create things. Mansions. Skyscrapers. Cool Cars. You may not approve of what they are building, but they are building something.
What does Bane create? Nothing. He envies, and he resents. What other people have, he takes. What he cannot take, he destroys. For all his lofty rhetoric, he is simply a parasite, desperately trying to convince his host that it owes him a free ride.
Ghandhi once said, " ‘An eye for an eye’ makes the whole world blind."
Well, “Soak the rich” makes the whole world poor.
Somewhere Ayn Rand is smiling. Or at least trying to.
Batman 1939, an angry vigilante seeking revenge … Paul Kersey, Death Wish
He becomes: a brilliant scientist, philanthropist with ultra-advanced gadgets who won’t kill, and would like to rehabilitate … Doc Savage.
Finally in the end: a weary one man army who kills in grim resignation … Dirty Harry
The stories aren’t the problem, the costume is the problem, like a gaudier, more flamboyant “Green Hornet”, (who I thought was a more interesting film noir vigilante than Batman).
If the film makers had the confidence to put him in black BDUs, bullet-proof vest, a black cowl like a bandana with eye-holes, and realistic high-tech gadgets, he could be a smarter, more tech-savvy version of the Punisher. Replace the silly cape with a black glider-chute, keep the cars and planes believable, I think the results would fit the original character’s intent better than the plastiky get-up.