Joker: 10 1970s Comic Book Movies DC Should Make Next

10. The Riddler As Dirty Harry

Having reworked the Joker in the image of Travis Bickle, what other classic Batman antagonists might benefit from a 1970s makeover?

The Riddler is a character who often suffers in adaptations by being essentially being used as a sort of Joker-lite (witness Jim Carrey's performance in Batman Forever), but the world of the gritty 70s crime thriller could be the perfect environment for a Riddler story that focuses on the character's own unique identity, his love of puzzles and ciphers and using them to tease the authorities, while keeping him a shadowy enigma (pun intended).

A realistic reimagining of the Riddler would see him in the mould of one of the 1970s' most famed and feared real world villains, a serial killer who taunted the police with clues and puzzles as to his identity and forever evaded capture, all while creating a climate of fear on the streets of San Francisco: the Zodiac Killer.

Fortunately, one of the archetypal morally murky 70s thrillers uses a pretty transparent Zodiac expy in the form of Dirty Harry's villain Scorpio. Why not follow Joker's idea of a Bat-villain in a Batman-free Gotham and do Dirty Harry with Riddler as Scorpio?

The streets of 1971 Gotham are stalked by a mysterious killer who sends coded messages to the police and the press to taunt them over his identity. Only Gotham police detectives Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya (standing in for the original movie's hard-edged, maverick, rule-breaking cop Harry Callahan and his rookie partner Chico Gonzalez) can stop him.