Cast any actor from any era for your dream Batman cast.

[Thrall]

Batman - Young Alec Baldwin
Alfred - Alec Guiness
Robin - Joseph Gordon Levitt
Nightwing - James Marsden
Batgirl - Zhang Zhi Yi
Oracle - Rachel Nichols
Azrael - Alexander Skarsgård
Spoiler - Hillary Duff
Huntress - Eliza Dushku
Gordon - Kurt Russell
Bullock - Dennis Franz or James Gandolffini
Montoya - Michelle Rodriguez

The Joker - Jim Carrey
Harley Quinn - Britney Murphy
Scarecrow - Vincent Price
Penguin - Charles Laughton
Bane - The Rock
Killer Croc - Vin Diesel
The Riddler - Kevin Spacey
Catwoman - Rosario Dawson
Mr. Freeze - Patrick Stewart
Poison Ivy - Scarlet Johansen
Two-Face - Mel Gibson

[Captaindemotion]

You know who I think could have made an interesting, daring choice for the Joker in the 1989 movie?

Glenn Close.

Seriously. She's quite androgynous looking, as is The Joker. In Damages, she looks very like the Joker is often drawn. You can imagine her doing the voice. She can do mad, maniacal and evil. She can do funny. And it might add a whole level of subtext to the Batman Joker relationship.

Women have played men in movies before - Linda Hunt, in The Year of Living Dangerously, or Tilda Swinton (who could also probably do a good Joker).

Fanboys would have been up in arms, but I reckon her performance would have silenced them.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Glenn Close would've made a good Queen of Hearts:

[TK421]

Batman = Kirk Douglas.

Douglas did most of his own stunts (The Vikings) and has Batman's comicbook profile.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

I thought of Kirk Douglas for Two-Face. Come to think of it, he might have made a good Joker, too.

[Captaindemotion]

Frank Gorshin, the 1960s Riddler, used to do the greatest impression of Kirk Douglas.

I think Douglas would have been a better Two-Face than Batman. Given what a great onscreen pairing he and Burt Lancaster made, a Batman movie starring the athletic former circus performer Lancaster as The Dark Knight and Douglas as Two-Face would have been something to relish.

[The Borgified Corpse]

JacksonArcher wrote:

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Speaking of The Dark Knight Returns, I know Clint Eastwood is always touted as the guy who should play him, but now at 70 (and if and when the graphic novel ever decidedly gets adapted, much older) I think that makes him a tad too old for the part. I always envisioned someone like Robert Redford as a DKR Bruce Wayne/Batman, or someone around that age bracket.

Give it a few more years and I think we could bring back Michael Keaton.

Captaindemotion wrote:

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Comm Gordon - Another vote for Oldman but a younger Stacy Keach would also have been a good fit for the role.

Gary Oldman is a perfect young Jim Gordon but if they ever decided to go in an older direction, I think Stacy Keach would still work.

DigificWriter wrote:

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My dream scenario would be to see Christopher Nolan sort of pay homage to two of the four previous Batman films by bringing in Danny DeVito and Jim Carrey to play slightly toned-down versions of the Batman characters (The Penguin and The Riddler, respectively) that they portrayed in Batman Returns and Batman Forever

I can see what you're saying about Jim Carrey, although telling him to turn down the volume never really works well. But with Danny DeVito, I just can't separate him from a Penguin that is very specific to Tim Burton's universe. (And while I do very much enjoy the recent Chris Nolan films, I still have a great respect for Tim Burton's films. I think, ultimately, Batman & Gotham City don't belong in the real world. They belong inside a nightmarish gothic fantasy.)

I have such regard for the work of Tim Burton & Chris Nolan that I would probably pick a lot of their choices for the films. But for my own separate elseworlds:
Batman - Ben Browder
Barbara Gordon - Kristen Bell
Commissioner Gordon - Stacy Keach
The Joker - Mark Hamill
Ra's al-Ghul - David Warner
Harley Quinn - Nicole Sullivan
Catwoman - Angelina Jolie
Poison Ivy - Jeri Ryan
Two-Face - Robert Downey Jr.
Alfred Pennyworth - Jon Pertwee
The Riddler - My version is someone pretty young, like Adam Busch or Fran Kranz
Bane - Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Killer Croc - Vin Diesel
Mr. Freeze - Jason Statham
Scarecrow - Brent Spiner
The Penguin - Burgess Meredith

[Gecko of Gorn]

Batman- Gabriel Byrne circa 1992.
Alfred- Peter O'Toole circa 1982.
Gordon- Gary Oldman.
Joker- Lee Marvin circa 1968.
Ra's- Sean Connery circa 1978.
Catwoman- Julie Christie circa 1967.
Scarecrow- Donald Sutherland circa 1975.
Penguin- Sydney Greenstreet circa 1940.

For a JL cameo:
Green Lantern/Hal Jordan: Paul Newman circa 1960.

[JacksonArcher]

You know, Borgified Corpse, I always thought a Tim Burton/Michael Keaton/Danny Elfman Dark Knight Returns movie could be stellar. Let Burton make it a psuedo sequel to Batman Returns and...

[The Comedian]

Noir version:
Batman: James Dean
Gordon: Humphrey Bogart
Joker: James Cagney
Two-Face: Edgar G. Robinson
Catwoman: Jane Russell

60's version:
Batman: James Caan
Gordon: Telly Savalas
Joker: Donald Sutherland
Catwoman: Natalie Wood
Two-Face: Gene Hackman

[ManOnTheWave]

Peter O'Toole MUST be the Joker.

[Captaindemotion]

^Again, when there was talk of a Batman movie in the wake of Superman the Movie, his was the name that was linked to that role. Funnily enough, when they were casting for Begins, he was by then in the running for Alfred ...

[Nerys Myk]

BATMAN/Bruce Wayne: Charlie Sheen.(He looks like a Bob Kane drawing)
ROBIN/Dick Grayson: Robert Blake (from the 1940s)
JOKER: Jeff Goldblum (Big Chill era)
BATGIRL/Babs Gordon:Ann-Margret (Bye Bye Birdy era)
James Gordon: Sam Elliot
Alfred: Arthur Treacher
RIDDLER: Frank Gorshin
PENGUIN: Burgess Meredith
CATWOMAN: Julie Newmar

[The Borgified Corpse]

JacksonArcher wrote:

---

You know, Borgified Corpse, I always thought a Tim Burton/Michael Keaton/Danny Elfman Dark Knight Returns movie could be stellar. Let Burton make it a psuedo sequel to Batman Returns and...

As always, Jackson Archer, I'm glad when you & I are on the same wavelength. Here's hoping Warner Bros. is sophisticated enough to allow 2 very different flavors of Batman to coexist.

One thing I've noticed in the "Funniest Superhero Lines" thread is that there's a lot of quotable stuff from the Tim Burton movies but not so much from the Chris Nolan movies.

OT but I'm finding the wait for Batman III much more difficult than the wait for The Dark Knight. After Batman Begins, we were at least able to feed upon the reliable foreshadowing at the end of that film that the next one would involve the Joker. And everyone expected Harvey Dent to be involved because his story was the one most horrendously botched by Batman Forever. But after The Dark Knight, all we really have is rampant speculation-- Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin, Johnny Depp as the Riddler, etc. I'd like Nolan or Bale to give us a hint, just a tiny smidgen of a hint as to what Batman III is going to be about.

[JacksonArcher]

That's usually the case with a lot of third installments in my opinion. For example, I had no idea where Spider-Man 3 was headed in terms of villains. Venom came as a complete shock. Same goes for Terminator 3. After the long wait from the second film I had no idea where they were heading with a third.

Some "threequels" write themselves, though. I think most fans knew exactly where the third X-Men film was headed after the visage of the Dark Phoenix surfacing at the end of X2. We all knew what Revenge of the Sith was going to be about. That was obvious.

Chris Nolan certainly didn't leave any clues at the end of The Dark Knight, that's for sure. Even more perplexing is David Goyer commenting that Batman III might not feature traditional, known villains from Batman's Rogues Gallery.