5. More Catwoman
Leather bodysuit aside, Anne Hathaway surprised a lot of people with her seductive performance as Selina Kyle. Along with many others, I was expecting Tom Hardy's Bane to take the cake, but was pleasantly surprised to see Hathaway's Selina steal every scene she was in, except for those scenes with Juno Temple, who, to be frank, was a waste and did very little for the film besides radiate lesbian undertones to Selina's already enticing aura. From her first scene with Christian Bale, Hathaway demonstrated a subtle transformation when she shed the coy demeanor of a housemaid to reveal a sly, thieving femme fatale, who did more than steal Wayne's mother's necklace. She stole our attention and had us hook, line, and sinker; we were putty in her hands. From that point on, we looked forward to Selina interacting with Bale's Bruce Wayne because much like the Joker in The Dark Knight, it appeared that a playful, cunning female counterpart to Wayne's serious, moral character would have a dynamic and irresistible chemistry. The first change that would improve TDKR would be to add more Selina Kyle. Simple. Just as we were magnetized by Heath Ledger's Joker and his interactions with the Dark Knight, we wanted to watch more of Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle. The Joker revealed much about the character of Bruce Wayne, such as how far he was willing to go to save someone he loved, but also reaffirmed that his belief in justice was not something to be broken. Unfortunately, with Talia's, Bane's, and John Blake's character developments and storylines, there was never enough of Kyle to go around. What Selina Kyle could have brought to surface in Bruce Wayne, we'll never know, but the potential was there. Selina Kyle was a representation of the lower class, people who had resort to criminal acts to provide for themselves much like the murderer of Bruce's parents. The relationship between her and Bruce, and their subsequent dialogues, would've been rich in subtext and may have, perhaps, redefined what Bruce thought of the lower class criminals. It could've been used as a commentary of the relationship between the 1% and the 99%, which we got a hint of when Selina was dancing with Bruce, "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us." And when Bruce had everything taken away from him, forcing him to crawl out of the depths on his own (pun intended), then we could've seen a more meaningful change in Bruce and in Batman. Selina Kyle, we hardly knew ye.