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The cool thing about Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of Batman’s villains is that they’re all steeped in realism. We never imagined Joker the way Christopher Nolan envisioned him. It was sick. Siiiick!
But that’s the thing. Now that The Dark Knight Rises, the final Batman film in Nolan's trilogy, is coming out this Friday, and Bane (played by Tom Hardy) is its main antagonist, we know that there’s a whole rogues gallery out there that we’ll never get to see put to film under the director’s vision. Here are 10 Batman Villains We Wish We'd Seen in a Christopher Nolan Movie. Somebody get us a hanky. Not seeing these characters in one of his flicks is criminal.
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10. Ventriloquist
OK, so the Ventriloquist would probably ruin Christopher Nolan’s career if he ever attempted using him as a villain. Or, it could solidify him as the most inventive director of all time if he actually pulled it off. Either way, we would have loved to have seen this bizarre villain put to film, as he’s quite possibly the craziest of all of Batman’s villains. Yes, even crazier than the Joker.
The Ventriloquist’s insanity has no bounds. Holding a doll aptly named Scarface, Arnold Wesker honestly believes that the doll is calling the shots, and this would have made an interesting dynamic in Nolan’s world. We could actually feel bad for the villain this time. He’s seriously mentally ill.
9. Mad Hatter
Mind-control. That’s Mad Hatter’s game. And while The Joker played a mind-control game of his own with Batman in The Dark Knight, the Mad Hatter (a.k.a. Jervis Tetch) would have other plans of controlling every mind in Gotham City if he were in a movie, possibly with another airborne chemical or hallucinogenic like the one Scarecrow used in Batman Begins.
We can’t see Nolan relying on a character using hats to control people. That’s just a little silly and too outlandish for Nolan’s world. But who knows? Maybe Nolan would even make the whole Alice in Wonderland complex that Tetch has work. He made Scarecrow work after all, and that was no small feat.
8. Firefly
Though he’s thought of by some to be one of the worst Batman villains, we like the idea of a pyromaniac destroying Gotham City. And we’re talking about the Post-Crisis version of Firefly (a.k.a., Garfield Lynn) here, not the Pre-Crisis version who used visual tricks like Spiderman’s Mysterio. We don’t know if we’d want him to be the main bad guy, but a side villain at least. He could really mess shit up and put serious heat to the Dark Knight.
7. Deadshot
Deadshot is so dangerous because he wants to go out in a blaze of glory. He’s also a killer shot. If Christopher Nolan’s Batman ever went toe to toe with him, we’re thinking it would be similar to the Beltway Sniper incident a few years back. He would be a killer who makes people afraid to leave their houses in Gotham City and also one who wants Batman to come after him. It would be really intense. Too bad we’ll never see it.
6. Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy is one of Batman’s few “supervillains,” in that she can control plant life. But that’s the comic books, and Nolan clearly doesn’t follow the comic books to a T (Bane would be about four times Batman’s size if he did). So if we did see Poison Ivy, she’d probably be an environmentalist with a good heart, but poisonous lips—purely chemical, of course. Nothing biological like a mutation or anything like that.
Similar to Firefly, we couldn’t see her as the lead villain, but somebody on the sidelines. Just don’t invite Uma Thurman to the table read. She already ruined the character once in Batman & Robin.
5. Killer Croc
Killer Croc seems like a difficult character to translate to Nolan’s world, considering that he’s basically a human crocodile, but he wouldn’t have to be. He could be like how he started in the comic with the very real Epidermolytic hyperkeratosis. In the film, he would be a serial killer with really bad skin, and Batman could wrestle him in the sewer. How intense would that be? Yep, pretty damn intense, indeed.
4. Calendar Man
Calendar Man is one of those villains who sounds dumb on paper and would probably be dumb in the movies. But what if he wasn’t? Imagine a murderer similar to the Zodiac killer but with specific dates and times that he killed. And Batman had to track him down. The Long Halloween would of course be an inspiration for the movie’s tale. It would rule. You know it would.
3. Hugo Strange
Professor Hugo Strange has a long history with Batman, preceding even Joker and Catwoman, and even knows that he’s Bruce Wayne. And if his appearance in the game Arkham City, where he locks the Dark Knight down in a super-prison with some of Gotham's worst criminals, is any indication of what could be done with him, he’s definitely a character who would be put to great use in Nolan’s world. We wish he had been in Batman Begins, as he would have fit well with Scarecrow.
2. The Riddler
A lot of people said that The Riddler would be a bad choice for a Christopher Nolan movie since we already had the Joker, and all we have to say to that is, huh? The Riddler would be a totally different character in Nolan’s hands. We’re thinking Nolan would finally whip out the detective side of the Dark Knight, having the Riddler sprinkling crimes all over Gotham and Batman having to solve them before a church explodes, or something else terrible happens.
We lament that we’ll never see him. But there’s one character that we’d like to see Christopher Nolan tackle even more...
1. Black Mask
In Christopher Nolan’s universe, the less supernatural the villain, the better, and how much less supernatural can you get than a guy who wears a black skull mask and a business suit? Not much, right?
That said, we’re sure Nolan would ax the whole getting struck by lighting thing, but he'd probably keep the background story of how Black Mask (Roman Sionis) and Bruce Wayne grew up together, and how Wayne ultimately bailed Sionis out when his company went belly-up.
It could be a great revenge story. One we haven’t really seen in the entirety of the Batman saga. A tale of business. We want it.
