I'm Reading Your Stuff: General News and Discussion Thread

[Whatupman]

Okay, a weird, spontaneous theory based on the different rumors ... what if Bruce and Harvey were childhood friends, and Harvey looks up Bruce in the present to get some help. He and Gilda are trying to raise their first child, but Harvey is struggling hard to be the father he wants to be. He hasn't dealt with the trauma his own father put him through, and he is so scared that he is gonna turn out just like that abusive monster. Harvey feels like Bruce is the only one who understands him because he also had to live through a trauma and grow up without any real parents.
In the end, Harvey doesn't manage to heal his trauma and instead succumbs to his darker side, and so does Gilda. Bruce manages to do what Harvey couldn't. He manages to rise above his trauma and take care of Harvey and Gilda's child. Bruce vows to make sure that the child gets a better childhood than he and Harvey ever got the chance to have. And then, in the third movie, the child grows up to become Robin.

 

[Boom]

I have enough faith in Matt to make whatever he does go with super compelling, so whatever we're getting I'm cool with, but I will just say the Dent family stuff intrigues me A LOT more than the Court of Owls ever could. That would feel like something really fresh to me.

Correct.

 

[Sithborg]

Stop it with Hush and the CoO…

It’ll thankfully never happen.

Eh, the core idea of what the Court of Owls is is pretty much the running theme of Reeve's universe so far. Are you getting immortal owl masked ninjas, no. But rich *******s ruining Gotham, absolutely.

I have enough faith in Matt to make whatever he does go with super compelling, so whatever we're getting I'm cool with, but I will just say the Dent family stuff intrigues me A LOT more than the Court of Owls ever could. That would feel like something really fresh to me.

If anything, I foresee Reeves' version will be closer to the Harley Quinn version than the comic/live action tv versions.

 

[DKDetective]

Eh, the core idea of what the Court of Owls is is pretty much the running theme of Reeve's universe so far. Are you getting immortal owl masked ninjas, no. But rich *******s ruining Gotham, absolutely.



If anything, I foresee Reeves' version will be closer to the Harley Quinn version than the comic/live action tv versions.

That's just because the Court is a lesser rehash of themes and ideas that have been present in Batman comics from the very beginning, whether it be Rupert Thorne in Strange Apparitions or the Mob and corrupt officials in Year One and Long Halloween/Dark Victory.

Past depictions of capitalism and corruption run amuck in Gotham were far more striking and interesting than the Court because of the mundane nature of it all. Gotham is far more interesting when Batman and the Freaks are just a symptom of a very real problem left unchecked. We see that very situation in the US right now with unregulated capitalism causing the rise of dysfunctional politics and freakish demagogues like Trump.

 

[Sithborg]

That's just because the Court is a lesser rehash of themes and ideas that have been present in Batman comics from the very beginning, whether it be Rupert Thorne in Strange Apparitions or the Mob and corrupt officials in Year One and Long Halloween/Dark Victory.

Past depictions of capitalism and corruption run amuck in Gotham were far more striking and interesting than the Court because of the mundane nature of it all. Gotham is far more interesting when Batman and the Freaks are just a symptom of a very real problem left unchecked. We see that very situation in the US right now with unregulated capitalism causing the rise of dysfunctional politics and freakish demagogues like Trump.

Don't forget a certain island they all seemed to club at.

 

[Luke995]

3:22 - 3:42

Reeves is pretty clear: he picked the right villain that's linked with Bruce's past AND it's never really been done in a movie before.

Seems like Harv? Not to me.

I'm still on Doc Arkham/Hugo Strange + Hush or similar.
But I definitely say Harv is in the movie.

Two more point.

1. Clayface was originally in Reevesverse, right?
He was the villain of this one? Maybe Matt and Mattson took the concept of "identity" and moved it from Clayface to Hush? Tommy Elliot is a plastic surgeon and they have Mike Marino.

2. Why is this movie so important to be set less than two months after Part I (at least, the first act)? I don't have an answer for that, but I think Riddler's revelations will have a major role.
And I don't see Dent being strictly tied to them. But Elliots and Arkhams do.

 

[BobJM]

Just reread The Long Halloween after the rumor cycle. Dark Victory is next—it’s been ages since I read that. But, man, TLH still holds up. Read it quickly on the DC Infinite while listening to Giacchino’s The Batman score.

There’s so much more to Harvey Dent (and Two Face) than we saw in TDK. If this is the direction Reeves is going in, I can definitely be down

 

[SwordOfMorning]

Or if it's intentional studio misdirection, similar to the Stanley Merkel stuff. Gunn debunks stuff, sure, but he has also debunked true leaks so like, idk I don't really put a ton of weight into what he says anymore.

It's pretty weird that all of these leaks with Pitt and Johansson and the casting seemed to have the same source, and then suddenly after that all went viral, a separate source apparently dropped who they were being cast as. Like it's weird that the people in the know about who was being cast, aren't also all in the know about who they were being cast as. Sneider didn't hint that he knew about this til the day before he dropped it, which he would have hinted at earlier, or dropped with his big ScarJo report. It just all feels sus.

Gunn, specifically, weasel-words with real leaks. Maybe he has straight up fully "debunked" something true, but he's extremely careful about how he words things sometimes in a way that, if anything, makes it super obvious what's true - see: Ultraman, Supergirl, etc.

Furthermore: to what end? To... briefly extend the window of time where we don't know what characters are in the movie, a period that is inevitably drawing to a close as the movie shoots in a couple months?

It's a Batman movie. The actual details of the mystery aren't going to matter much. In The Batman, the "case" is just a plot railroad to hit other emotional and story beats. This isn't a problem, but I'd expect the sequel to be the same way. They're not going to perform weird elaborate fake leaks to protect "the mystery" and it would be extremely dumb to play goofy games in the media just to distract from... idk, Hush or whatever? Who cares?

The Stanley Merkel "Misinformation" was also just incredibly basic stuff. It was just slapping a fake name to list Barry as. Which, conceivably, could have held 'til test screenings when everything always leaks anyway.

 

[Lily Adler]

View attachment 157862

 

[SwordOfMorning]

Most of the core emotional hooks you'd get from Hush like being childhood friends with Bruce, etc - are also all frequent plot points in Two-Face stories. There's a myriad of logical ways to link the Dent's to Bruce's emotional arc and, tbh. My own personal copium remains that the Dent father/son stuff will be in there in service of Bruce stumbling into being the worlds most awkward, emotionally stunted Goth Dad.

 

[dhandler01]

Man, totally valid and that's your taste - not meant in any hostile way - but the idea of a Dent family psychodrama tragedy is so much more interesting to me than the Court. It's not even in the same ballpark.

Honestly neither sound all that great. The Court seems played out and well...The Dents feels like it should be the next series not the plot to a Batman film. JMHO.

 

[Erik Lensherr]

Hear me out

 

[Stringer]

I don't want to suffer through another botched Fassbender American accent. Just make Dent British if that happens lol.

 

[BobJM]

He's been fancast for years but I really do think Oscar Isaac would be tops for Harvey.

There's plenty of other directions to take, but he'd be the most interesting IMO. He can really dial up the theatricality when Two-Face takes over

Otherwise, there really is a wide net of directions Reeves can go w/ Dent casting

 

[squeekness]

Hear me out

Always a good choice.

 

[SJD]

What about Boyd Holbrook or Jamie Dornan as Harvey Dent? I could see both.

 

[Lily Adler]

What about Boyd Holbrook or Jamie Dornan as Harvey Dent? I could see both.

Discount Henry Cavill?

 

[Chris B]

I wonder what the odds are that Gilda will be combined with another character like Phantasm or something? Holiday isn't really a marketable character and its not clear that Dent would transform into Two-Face in this film.

 

[Boom]

How about Harvey Dent and Gilda Dent as a tag-team murdering duo? Harvey is the public face of honor and justice, but when the bad guys get off on their "technicalities," Gilda comes in as the Hangman and delivers the final "justice." But the killings are specifically coordinated with Harvey. Or rather, "Big Bad Harv." So Harvey and Gilda are picking off mobsters one by one, forcing Penguin to reach out to Batman with an under-the-table proposal. Find out who's taking us out and I'll be your eyes and ears within Gotham's organized crime ring.

The movie ends with Gilda dying and Harvey being disfigured and incarcerated at Arkham. Then he's one of the major players in the third film set in Arkham that I am trying to will into existence.

With Bruce's transformation at the end of The Batman, "duality" is a perfect theme to explore in the sequel. The struggle with balancing two halves of self that are intrinsically opposed to one another.

Two-Face is quite literally the perfect choice. I'm just very wary of using him again without doing something markedly different than Nolan's take.

Harvey Dent vs Big Bad Harv. Duality.
Harvey Dent (light justice) and Gilda Dent (dark justice). Duality.

Bumping a post from back in 2022.

Maybe Harvey and Gilda are both villains?

 

[J.Drangal]

I wonder what the odds are that Gilda will be combined with another character like Phantasm or something? Holiday isn't really a marketable character and its not clear that Dent would transform into Two-Face in this film.

I'm betting on Gilda either being secretly connected to the Arkham family, and therefore to Martha Wayne, perhaps in a visual amalgamation of Lady Arkham and Phantasm... or that she'll end up becoming a female version of Two-Face (as Reeves said, a villain who had "never really been done in a movie before"...).

And I base all of this solely on the fact that they apparently actively sought out a high-profile actress for the role (yeah, it's not much ahah).
In any case, until we learn more about the other possible characters and actors, I imagine it will be a more bombastic version of the character. I mean, you're not looking to cast Emma Stone in that kind of movie to play the role of a discreet wife who turns out, at the last second, to be an even more discreet killer.

... right?

 

[OtherwiseKnownAs]

 

[Erik Lensherr]

View attachment 158002

Clayface

 

[SwordOfMorning]

There is an almost 0% chance it’s Clayface. Gotta assume those early Clayface rumours were a game of telephone from the early days of the Flanagan movies development where it was presumably gonna be a Battinson connected movie.

 

[Erik Lensherr]

There is an almost 0% chance it’s Clayface. Gotta assume those early Clayface rumours were a game of telephone from the early days of the Flanagan movies development where it was presumably gonna be a Battinson connected movie.

That's what Deadline reported. They sounded too explicit.

 

[AndyTrevino]

What about Boyd Holbrook or Jamie Dornan as Harvey Dent? I could see both.

Holbrook is more Sionis to me.