Where Does ‘The Dark Knight’ Leave Us?

Not surprisingly, The Dark Knight has done sublimely well at the box office. We knew it was going to happen, but maybe we didn’t know just how well it was going to do. Given the way the world works, however, this means that there will almost definitely be a third movie in Christopher Nolan’s reinvention of the Batman franchise.

And according to an article over at MTV, Nolan and his co-writers — brother Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer — have already discussed the theme and villain for a third movie.

But of course, no one is saying anything, which leaves us to speculate.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

The overriding theme that we got from TDK concerning the future for Batman was that he and Gotham City were going to be at odds. This was brought to the fore during Batman’s conversation with an upside down Joker, and leading right into the final scenes between Batman and Gordon. Being chased into the shipping crates by Gotham’s finest’s canine unit and their human handlers, Batman is now the villain in a city which has just lost its white knight, Harvey Dent.

And this is not something that is new to the Batman universe, where oftentimes he is painted as a criminal vigilante. So in all likelihood, a large portion of a third Batman movie under Nolan’s direction will focus on Batman having to hide from the law. But just like Gordon’s young son, there will be those in Gotham that know that Batman is innocent of the crimes labeled against him.

But Batman versus Gotham is not going to be the title of the next film; there needs to be a villain. But this villain has to allow Batman the chance to redeem himself in the public eye. Enough must be put on the line, at stake, that Batman’s sacrifices and struggles to bring whomever to justice will allow him to be the hero that Gotham needs.

Add in to this equation the need to keep a measure of reality to the villains, and your list continues to diminish. Because as much as I love the Riddler or Bane, I can’t see them appearing in a third Nolan movie as Batman’s big enemy.

I’ve been asking my Twitter-peeps who they think will be making a return for the third movie, and the one answer I keep getting is Two-Face. Now I was at once saddened when the movie finished that they had killed off Harvey Dent. However, I was soon alerted to the possibility that he wasn’t actually dead. Nothing is said on the scene of Two-Face’s fall from the construction site, and the need to keep him redeemed in the eyes of the city was what sent Batman running in the first place, so it isn’t a huge leap to think that they faked his death and locked him up in Arkham Asylum.

So write Two-Face in as the number one choice of fans. But there are others, two in particular that have all of a sudden seen an opening in the position of “female lead”: Poison Ivy and Catwoman.

Catwoman will never play the big bad villain, and for good reason. She is a very talented burglar, but she’s not going to be vying for world domination or committing mass murder anytime soon. So she will play a small role in the next film, of that I am sure. She will be Bruce Wayne’s love interest and Batman’s constant annoyance in a city that doesn’t like either of them, which in and of itself will make for some fantastic scenes.

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But in my movie, I would have Bruce Wayne and Catwoman forced into partnership by the evil doings of one Pamela Isley, aka, Poison Ivy.

Though the fantastical element of Ivy’s ability is to control plants and the like, take a step back and what you have is a fan favorite villain who is out to protect the planet and its plants. In this day and age of environmental awareness, the idea of making a movie where the main antagonist is trying to protect a city by destroying it is not a big leap to make. And even if Nolan and Co want to drop the attachment to realism, Poison Ivy still manages to be one of the better villains in the pages of Batman.

You’ve heard what I and my Twitter-peeps have to say, let’s hear what you have to say. The comments are just below, leave as long a reply as you would like. We would love to hear what you think. Who should be the villain(s) for the third Batman movie?

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