The Dark Knight to have a female villain?

[Bad Bishop]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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Christina Hendricks is the ONLY person who should be playing Poison Ivy.

Why are Blake Lively and Natalie Portman mentioned in the article? Because they really are in contention for key roles, or because the writer has bad intel from dubious sources? I suspect the latter. I doubt that Nolan would be interested in very busy actresses from other superhero film franchises.

[Agent Richard07]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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Nat seems everywhere and rumored for everything these days thanks to the rave early reviews for her performance in "Black Swan".

Nat's been rumored for everything since 1999. It's nothing new.

[Admiral_Young]

^ Yeah but in this case she's been rumored in far more things than she normally has and it is connected to her performance in "Black Swan" which has people talking Oscar for her, I don't think she's been in this high demand for projects for years. I think over the last two months she's been rumored in at least a half a dozen different projects from Alfronso Curaon's "Gravity" now to "Dark Knight Rises" and no doubt more that we've not heard of yet.

[Lapis Exilis]

Myasishchev;4522707
wrote:

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Well, not to put words in anybody's mouths, but I think the sentiment was "why bother having token females, if all you're going to do is use them as someone the protagonist attempts to fuck/save"?

I agree with your point, that there ought to be female characters who aren't there just to do that. The problem here is firstly with the source material and secondly with how Nolan's run the franchise.

Honestly, I disagree with this - while Rachel was pretty much reduced to sacrifical victim in Dark Knight, in BBegins she did have much more of a purpose than just a woman to fuck/save. Acting as Bruce's conscience made her one of the strongest female characters in Batman history, and certainly one of the best love interests that the character has ever had.

Catwoman is actually a pretty decent character, but on the other hand, not really a villain to hang a film on, because she's not opposed to Batman, really, they just kind of get in each other's way. Also, there's not much thematic power in "big buy beats up a woman who likes to steal shit." Fetish material, yes, but no thematic power.

Nolan has radically reimagined several characters I wouldn't have considered worth a decent story, so I'm pretty sure he could do the same with Catwoman. There have been times when she's been quite a good villain and she mostly gets weakened when they try to make her "bad but really good", or focus too much on the romance angle.

After that, I'm at a loss to think of any female Bat-family characters that are suitable. Poison Ivy was mentioned, but let's not kid ourselves, she's fundamentally a B-list Bat-villain. B+, at best. Her power set also fails to fit into the gritty/realistic/frankly uncool Nolan interpretation of the Batman mythos.

Harley Quinn? Yeah, the Joker's obnoxious sidekick ought to be able to finish the trilogy on a high note.

Sasha Bordeaux? You don't even know who that is. And neither do I. Nor do either one of us care. Also she wasn't a villain.

I literally couldn't think of any more, so I went here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_villains

The first female villain I even recognized was Lady Vic. And I'd bet a dollar I'm the only one who knows what she looks like, and that's only on account she was in Secret Six.

But she did remind me of Lady Shiva, who would come off pretty much identically to Talia, outside the larger context of the comics, in the narrower scope of film portrayal. Except she'd also be a racial stereotype. Keen!

Always possible they'll invent a new character for the film. I'd like to see that, actually.

I still say Azrael or Bane, or both. They're the only foes that would 1)fit in with Nolan's take on Batman in general and 2)have enough conceptual strength to carry a film.

I'll never get the interest in Bane. He's never seemed much of a character to me. Azrael - there's a lot of backstory there, not sure how they'd work that into a movie.

*On the other hand, maybe Talia in the Nolanverse wouldn't be too bad. It might be better than in some of the comics she's been in, since her portrayal in the upcoming film would, by default, not be a portrayal of Talia that didn't reduce her to "that chick Bruce Wayne banged back in the 1980s, and who finally had his son twenty years later"--that is, essentially a plot device. Seriously, I just read Batman and Son and for its few strengths, Morrison's Talia is just... painfully bad. Painfully sexist and really just unpleasantly pointlike in how many dimensions she exists in there. (Also, note to aspiring terrorists: you can't make the British Army disband its garrison on Gibraltar because you kidnapped the PM's wife. That's just fucking stupid.)

The main reason I don't care for Ra's and Talia as villains is their plans always seem remarkably dumb - the very epitome of overly convoluted, cliche comic book villain crap complete with pompous, posturing monologues.

Myasishchev wrote:

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Obsessed with being with Batman, to the point of mania. It was dreadfully off-putting.

Now, bear in mind I'm basing this off what I've read in the Batman and Son trade. Her brief appearance in Batman RIP wasn't much of anything substantial. My collection of Morrisonian Batman is patchy, largely because I keep trying to like it (because Morrison is, ordinarily, the shit), but I keep failing to do so.

Anyway, some sample lines to show you what I mean:

"You know I always get what I want, beloved. And what I want is you. I want us to fulfill my father's wishes and be a family [...] Join me and I promise I'll never threaten civilization again."

And Batman brushes her off and:

"Then it's war. And you're responsibile. My dear detective, my mad, bilionaire, brilliant genius with your secret hideouts [did Grant Morrison think we forgot which comic we were reading? shit, I thought this was about that guy from Krypton with the glasses, and further unnecessary description], your double life and your Justice League membership... it's not over."

Like, seriously? This is what all those cyphers in masks are going to die for? Talia al Ghul's loneliness? That's horrid.

Is she like that everywhere? Jeez.

Pretty much. Traditionally Talia has existed entirely for men. She generally has no motivation or thought process of her own and runs around either doing dirty deeds for her father, even when it supposedly tortures her own conscience, or runs around trying to seduce or entrap Bruce into a relationship. Early on, even though she was her father's right hand, he worked to likewise trap Bruce into a relatinship with her so that he could have a male heir because a daughter simply wouldn't work! Why she at that point didn't tell Ra's to go screw remains a mystery.

For a brief period they crossed her over into Superman and she took over LexCorp and she got interesting for about half a minute - then they went for this Batman and Son business, retconned back into continuity one of the worst stories in Batman's history (the one in which Damian is conceived) and she's right back to being an obsessive cliche with the emotional maturity of a jilted adolescent who can't conceive of life without her beloved to the point that she'll go psychotic to get him.

Which is not to say I couldn't see her being reimagined much the way Ra's was for the Nolan-verse. Make her a competent villain out for revenge for her father (who I am firmly convinced is not dead in the Nolan-verse - we never saw a body...), a skilled assassin with all the ninja skills and even more devious than either Ra's or Bruce and she could be very interesting.

[Admiral_Young]

I would argue again that Talia is the way she is through conditioning and breeding along with training. Talia is meant to be nothing more than a desirable object for men since Ra's means for her to mate with a suitable candidate to be his heir. He would have much preferred a son but got Talia instead and has treated her as such. I don't get what is so hard to contemplate about her. Her entire purpose is to serve the means of her father and that is what generates the conflict between her. She is incapable of having a destiny or life of her own. Every time she has attempted to do so she's been either manipulated by Ra's or forces belonging to Ra or has come back on her own whim. This is the tragedy of Talia al Ghul.

[Admiral2]

Aragorn wrote:

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How about Katie Holmes as Selena and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Talia?

Katie Holmes played the now-dead Rachel in the first movie. How would you explain her as Selina?

[Admiral_Young]

^He's obviously joking.

[Kegg]

Lapis Exilis wrote:

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The main reason I don't care for Ra's and Talia as villains is their plans always seem remarkably dumb - the very epitome of overly convoluted, cliche comic book villain crap complete with pompous, posturing monologues.

Which brings me back to 'Liam Neeson made it work'.

A monologue about how corrupt the world is and you've got to fix it, well, it's far too easy to go into righteous fanaticism territory. Liam Neeson makes his grandiose aims and terrorist plans seem calm and sensible, or at least is able to present himself as such. He's almost unassuming about it: This violence is how you fix things, I'm going ahead with it, probably not a good idea to get in my way, waiter get me the check. I think with the wrong casting Ra's al Ghul could have been a pretty weak villain in that movie.

I dunno. Skimming Wikipedia there's something vageuly silly about the guy. The sinister foreigner who is sinister and ancient and has an evil plan.

[Admiral_Young]

Granted to someone who is not familiar with Ra's and his history and connection with Bruce would make that connection, that he is a weak villain with a silly concept, but the fact of the matter is that Ra's is a global threat because of his global aims. He's targeted Gotham because it is Bruce Wayne's hometown and understands the symbolic importance it has to Bruce. The League of Shadows has operations all over the world. I think Liam Neeson made him work because Liam understood the character's motivations and desires. It might not seem on the outset that Ra's is Bruce's greatest enemy because of the long drawn out conflict between Bruce and Joker but Ra's is a more personal threat, even moreso now since they're family.

[Anwar]

Well, Ra's was created to be a homage to James Bond villains when he was created by Denny O'Neill back in the 70s. O'Neill even said that Sean Connery would be the best voice for him.

[Admiral_Young]

^ I wonder if that is why Timm and Dini ended up casting David Warner?

[The Badger]

Myasishchev wrote:

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What's a thermal masking material? Tin foil?

Apparently the stuff Bruce Wayne sprays on the bat suit in BB was to help mask his thermal image. From Wikipedia 'The armor was then coated with a black latex material for camouflage and to dampen Bruce's heat signature, making him difficult to detect with night-vision equipment.' Not canon, I know.

Too Much Fun wrote:

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There shouldn't be any doubt that his white face was not permanent, since there's that brief shot of him without any make-up at all when he's in disguise as a police man. Also, you can clearly see that some of the paint has come off during his interrogation scene.

Well, when I saw the film I assumed he'd used flesh coloured make up to disguise himself as a police man, much like Jack Nicholson in the Tim Burton film. I take your point on the interrogation scene though.

[Admiral_Young]

Joker's paint was just war paint, similar to how Jack attempts to disguise himself to the leaders of the mob in "Batman". He is also shown without it at the bank robbery when he reveals himself to the bank manager. Theatrics, consider the paint be the Joker's "mask".

[Myasishchev]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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I would argue again that Talia is the way she is through conditioning and breeding along with training. Talia is meant to be nothing more than a desirable object for men since Ra's means for her to mate with a suitable candidate to be his heir. He would have much preferred a son but got Talia instead and has treated her as such. I don't get what is so hard to contemplate about her. Her entire purpose is to serve the means of her father and that is what generates the conflict between her. She is incapable of having a destiny or life of her own. Every time she has attempted to do so she's been either manipulated by Ra's or forces belonging to Ra or has come back on her own whim. This is the tragedy of Talia al Ghul.

Couldn't Ra's just go, like, have some more sex? Or do Lazarus Pits mess up the twin gentlemen?

In any event, it's not really the in-universe character's problem. Talia's reasons for being weak are not of great concern to me, living as I do on an Earth-Prime not threatened by an antimatter wave. But that writers have continually conceived her as weak, however, is a bother.

Also, I don't get the breeding part. It's not like Talia is the end result of a carefully orchestrated eugenic program. She came about like the rest of us.

Lapis Exilis wrote:

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For a brief period they crossed her over into Superman and she took over LexCorp and she got interesting for about half a minute -

Yeah, I generally agree, although it didn't t make a lot of sense. I mean, Osama bin Laden is/was pretty good recruiter, organizer and leader of men, but I wouldn't put him in charge of General Electric. Aside from the obvious reasons, I'm not really sure the skill set that permits one to run a global criminal-terrorist conspiracy is exactly the same skill set required to be a legitimate CEO.

Plus, it's pretty clear she's never even heard the phrase "fiduciary duty."

Anyway, Talia's LexCorp gig was sort of weird, from a continuity standpoint. Like, this was pretty much right before Infinite Crisis, right, and the creation of Alex Luthor's Secret Society of Supervillains, and Alex Luthor is pretending to be Lex, even to his closest non-Kryptonian associates, and Talia just royally screwed over the real Lex and sold as many LexCorp assets as she could to Bruce Wayne.*

So my question is, how does Alex plausibly say, "Hey, Ms. Ghul, you did a great job with my company, you wanna help me run my supervillain army?" When she should be telling this guy, "I just helped Superman and Batman ruin your life. Also, you're a lazily-written madman and a junkie. I'm pretty sure you're going to murder me as soon as my back is turned." I mean, does he come back with a "Pish-tosh! Water under the bridge, old top!" and everything's just cool?

Maybe I missed a middle part.

*I'm sort of wondering about the legal aspects of that. If I recall, those sales would probably be void, since Wayne or the responsible decisionmaker there would have cause to know that the sales, if done substantially under market, were not authorized by her principal. I think the agency principle is that if one knows or should know that an agent is actively working against the principal, any obligations the agent attempts to create on behalf of her principal are not binding. But I'd have to go look that up and bleahhh.

[Admiral_Young]

The LexCorp gig was one of Talia's periods where she defied Ra's, it also ended up being part of Bruce and Clark's plan to take down Lex.