The Dark Knight Rises

On Wednesday Warner Bros. announced the villains and casting for Christopher Nolan's sequel to 'The Dark Knight.' Since a lot of the tone and even plot of the movie depend on these roles, I feel compelled to comment. [Warning: if you haven't seen 'Batman Begins' and 'The Dark Knight,' what are you doing reading blogs?!? Go watch them. For the rest of you, spoilers below.]

First, the obvious:

CATWOMAN

We all knew Catwoman was going to be one of the major villains.  The previous film ended with Batman heartbroken, without a love interest, on the run from the law.  It also featured low-budget Bat-imitators.  The stage was perfectly set for this character. In Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, Selina Kyle is a street prostitute who decides that if someone can dress up like a bat and fight crime, she can put on a costume and make a living off of the mob royalty of Gotham.  I'd love to see Selina use her new found wealth to position herself as a high class call girl, thus bringing her in contact with Bruce Wayne. Maybe she'll see through the billionaire-playboy act, or maybe she'll just take him for an easy mark.  In any case, it's hard to argue that being without a love interest and on the outs with the law won't leave Batman tempted to join a woman with the grit, intelligence, and skill to match him.  It's a moral dilemma Bale's Batman needs to face before we're done, in my view.

And who did they cast for this iconic role?

ANNE HATHAWAY

I'll admit, this is not the casting I expected. Selina Kyle is basically a classic noir femme fatale in a costume, and Anne Hathaway has never struck me as a femme fatale.  She has the physique for the role, and I'm pretty sure she has some background in films requiring some stuntwork.  But I'm not convinced she can sell a Tim Sale version of the character.

So I'm not convince here, yet. But you know who else I was skeptical of? Heath Ledger.

That's Best Supporting Actor Heath Ledger to the rest of us.

So we'll wait and see on Selina Kyle. I am willing to be convinced.

Now, Catwoman is a great villain, but certainly couldn't carry a blockbuster movie on her own. So who is going to be the big-bad villain?

BANE

That... was unexpected.  The stage seemed perfectly set for someone much like the Batman--but without his unwillingness to kill criminals--to enter the scene.  Someone like the Reaper, for example, who was rumored to be one of the villains considered for Batman Begins. Personally, I really wanted Nolan to steal a bit from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. I have in mind the first half of the last chapter, in which the city is plunged into chaos, and a large gang of teens called the Sons of Batman are getting ready to meet out their own version of justice when Batman shows up and decides to claim them as his own army. He brings order to the city, even though he is being hunted by the police.  When the new commissioner (Gordon has retired by this point) is asked "Shouldn't we bring him in?" She replies "No... he's too big..." He truly does become a legend larger than just one man, which would nicely bookend some of the key ideas from Batman Begins.

With a villain like Bane, though, I really don't know what direction they'll go with it.  He's a great villain, despite his appearance.  When he was introduced, he masterminded wave after wave of Batman's toughest enemies facing him, wearing the Bat down until Bane could face him at his weakest. As the picture above shows, Bane actually won, leaving Batman bound to a wheelchair for a time.  He also was one of only a few enemies Batman has had who figured out that he and Bruce Wayne were the same man.  The character is a pretty long way from the last version to make it on screen.  I really don't know what direction Nolan is going with this one.

It turns out Christopher Nolan picked someone he's worked with before to fill out Bane's wrestling mask:

TOM HARDY

 OK, I have no idea how he's going to pull off Bane, but casting Tom Hardy as the villain opposite Christian Bale's Batman is going to be awesome.  The pic is from Hardy's role in Inception, which he handled quite well.  He has a physical presence that should work well in a Batman movie, and I thought his performance was one of the better ones in the movie.  If we can get a scene between Hardy and Bale as electric as the interrogation scene between Bale and Ledger from The Dark Knight, the movie will be worth the price of admission right there.

So I don't really know what to make of the casting and villain choices at this point, at least beyond the non-committal, Spock-like response "fascinating."  I'll definitely be seeing this one in theaters... but you probably knew that already.