I'm not keen on
today's announcement that
Chris Nolan's third and final Batman film will be titled
The Dark Knight Rises. It's awkward, it doesn't roll off the tongue, and it's just feels, well...
flat. Anyone who tells you they didn't let out a twinge of disappointment when they first heard the news today is a bare-faced liar. Many a while ago I predicted that Warner Bros. would push Nolan into using 'The Dark Knight' somewhere in the title given the obvious marketability of pushing this as a direct sequel (let us not forget the film was the 2nd highest grossing domestic movie of all time before Avatar dropped it to third). Though personally I had in mind the much cooler and iconic
'The Dark Knight Returns' title that Frank Miller created in the 80's, but that would seem to have been snubbed. Shame. I'll get over my dislike of 'Rises'. Hell, I hated the
Batman Begins title for two whole years during pre-production.
What might take me a little longer to get out of my system is
Tom Hardy playing a character that won't be The Riddler, a character in fact who Nolan says won't be in the film at all. This was the sucker-punch news that took some while to sink in. Casting Hardy as anything but The Riddler in the next Batman movie is akin to
Tim Burton casting
Jack Nicholson to play The Penguin in 1989 and not The Joker, the part he was so obviously born to play. That's how truly bizarre this situation is. So who will Hardy be if not The Riddler?
Well, I guess a non-comic book character, either some kind of cop or a newly created villain? Though he's such a versatile actor he could play so many different versions of The Penguin, Black Mask (those two must be favourite), Bane, Killer Croc, Deadshot... pretty much anything. One choice I quite like is Tommy Elliott in a Hush movie though I always wanted his story to be told with The Riddler. I'm guessing it's safe to assume
Catwoman will be the familiar DC villain of the piece? Nolan says the movie won't be shot in 3D (YES!) but no word on how much IMAX filming is planned. Meanwhile, composer
Hans Zimmer spoke to
Popcorn Biz and revealed the status of the score, which I'm sure you will all agree was such a pivotal character in the emotionality of the last film;
" was going to come over next week. We start early. I know he's puttering around with ideas, and we sort of sneak up on things. Working with Chris, he gives me all the freedom in the world and encourages me to go and be daring and unusual and crazy and all those sorts of things and be able to be the sort of emotional center of the film. It's very give and take. I'll start long before he starts shooting. Our conversations start there and it goes both ways: we just have conversations about the movie and less about what the music has to do, and it really comes out of that, whereby I felt that there was a real emotional core to be had and that that was something that the music had to do and I hung on that for dear life."
If by the weekend we still don't know for sure what character Hardy is playing, I might do a big article on it. But I sure have lost my confidence to predict things after this unexpected Riddler shunning.