DACrowe
Avenger
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2000
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If Catwoman is the main attraction of the next Batman movie I am not seeing it. Hopefully Nolan has the good sense to spot an overrated character when he sees it.
And I'm sure if that's the case, you won't be missed.
To the OP, are you trying to start a war between the Nolanites and Burtonites with all your threads? It doesn't bug me as I'm a fine of both and love the comics and TAS as well, so talking about different interpretations is fine by me.
First of all, I doubt Nolan is "running scared" of tackling material done by Burton. Even if you don't feel Jack's Joker was anything special, he is/was (depending who you ask now) consider(ed) a great movie villain. He was on the AFI's Top 50 Screen Villains and made an instantly iconic turn as the Joker, so much so his performance has been talked about for 20 years.
And Nolan tackled that character with Ledger and blew past him like they were Seabiscuit. In fact Nolan's whole take on Batman, Gotham, Gordon, Dent/Two-Face and The Joker are pretty fearless and he just simply pushed previous interpretations of all of them in the shadows for the near foreseeable future.
So I doubt he is running scared.
As for Catwoman and Penguin, I don't think he said he would never use them. I know Oldman said he doesn't care for Catwoman (but did not get angry over the thought of her like he did at Robin and Batgirl) and Jonah Nolan merely scoffed off the question about using them as to saying everyone seems to think there is a small set of villains to pull from, even though they used Ra's Al Ghul and Scarecrow in BB who were never seen before. But I think he was just playing coy.
I'm fairly confident we're going to see Catwoman in the next movie and know we are seeing Riddler. I don't know who else (if anyone more) is going to show up. Albeit Riddler seems a little "small" to one-up the threat created by Joker in TDK.
I really like Burton's Catwoman, but I think the best way is to go a different route. Use the version from the comics, specifically Year One/The Long Halloween/Dark Victory. A Catwoman who is more ambiguous as to whether she is good or evil and is clearly sane and doing this for personal beneficial reasons and not because she flipped her lid and is completely nuts like Burton's.
I love Burton's and to oversimplify her story is a great disservice to what they did. She is as crazy as Burton's Batman. They really are made for each other. Her story is expressionistic of the soul who was stepped on so much she lashes out and completely destroys who she was. She "dies" and is reborn (it is all visually metaphorical in the best surrealist/expressionist's way). She destroys her old life of a shut-in who lived the good girl's life waiting for a knight in shining armor.
She is completely insane after her accident and creates a persona to ease her psychosis. She is indenpendent and free finally within this persona but she is still abused and stepped on by Batman and Penguin and slowly it slips away from her and she falls back into insanity as her costume falls to pieces. her mind is that suit and that persona and at the end it is completely gone and she finally has what her old self wanted in Bruce's offer but she is too far down this "monster she created" for liberation to take it. Truly tragic.
But the best way to differentiate from that is to make her a sane thief with aspirations for good and more seductive of Batman and less bat-crazy (pardon the pun).
As for Penguin. I simply do not want to see him done again. As the OP said, DeVito and Burton gave us the definitive take. The freakish monster with wells of pathos who is still a disgusting monster was a great achievement. The pudgey mob boss from the comics with a fetish for birds is so boring and stale compared to this brilliant characterization. They redefined a boring character into something truly special and unique in BR.
I do not want to see him redone as a crime boos in Nolan's world. Use Backmask and Scarface then. Don't use Penguin as the only great Penguin is Burton's, so no need to redo that. And as the comics one sucks, just avoid the character all together, then.