6. Rian Johnson
Fairly new director Rian Johnson has received praise recently for his time travel flick Looper. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly urge you to go out and watch it the first chance you get. It's awesome. However, Johnson is now one of WB's favorite rising directors, so it wouldn't surprise me if he actually DID get the role. Johnson's ability to mash sci-fi with a standard crime/action formula is what makes him perfect, since Batman technically qualifies as a sci-fi story. Sure, it's low sci-fi -- and the technology seems just out of reach -- but it's sci-fi. Johnson can bring villains like Mr. Freeze to life, giving him the respect he deserves, and weaponry that, rather than cartoonish, looks badass. Plus, from a directorial standard, he can really get good performances out of his actors. I bought Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character in Looper far more than I did in either Inception or TDKR. He can get the best out of his actors, and Batman, at its core, is about the characters and their psyches.