15 Essential Batman Villains Not Yet Used In The Movies

Why He's Awesome

He might be higher on the weird spectrum than a lot of the traditional evil stereotypes in the Rogues Gallery, but Man-Bat is as great as he is striking. As well as every advantage bats have - flight, sonar, giant claws and teeth - he also boasts super-strength, super-speed and superhuman senses. And most importantly, he looks like a massive sodding bat.

Man-Bat is the purest horror character there is in the Batman universe: while others have been adapted to fit spookier stories, he fits the genre through and through - a sort of comic book version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And that's very important. considering the value of symbolism and the idea of fear to Batman's very make-up. In a sense, Man-Bat confirms why Batman is so fearsome to villains, turning that back onto the Dark Knight himself, and no other villain really does that quite so specifically.

How Likely Is He?

Could a monster work in the current DCEU? Well, we've already had a mangled Doomsday, so genetic tinkering has some precedent, and there was a vague hint in Batman v Superman that Batman is actually haunted by visions of a giant Bat... So it's not like he wouldn't fit in easily.

The problem is tone: there's never been a full-blown horror comic book movie that's ever worked, and unless DC are really willing to get a genre specialist in (say Sam Raimi, PLEASE), it simply wouldn't work. It's also questionable whether they'd drop a whole different genre into a shared universe too, sadly. 4/10