4. Nicholas Cage As The Scarecrow
The second, and worst major casting fail that would have come to being had Joel Schumacher been allowed to release the awful-sounding Batman Triumphant was the idea that barmy Coppola cousin Cage could take on the Scarecrow successfully. You can see the thinking behind it - Cage could probably segue from raving mania to vulnerability, if that's what Schumacher had wanted, which is a good guess considering the model set by his other villains at least. But the simple fact is that Schumacher wouldn't have been able to control Cage in the role, and we would have something like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dr Freeze, but with less restraint and subtlety. The combination of Schumacher and Cage would have created a Frankenstein's monster of a disaster, and cage's career would have inevitably gone down the pan as a result, reducing him to taking on multiple terrible roles every year without any attempt to discern which would be valuable to his profile. Or in other words, exactly what is happening right now. Would it have been a marvel to behold? Probably, but in no way valuable for comic book fans - in much the same way Schumacher's films weren't.