So, in the wake of the Robert Pattison Batman trailer dropping, people online, particularly YouTube commentators, are now wondering how the rogues gallery for The Batman are going to be represented on the big screen. Sadly, the history of Batman’s villains really don’t lend themselves that well to the silver screen, or at least, they don’t if presented the way that they are in most of the graphic novels and videogames, with the Batman: Arkham series notwithstanding. So, with roughly 100 words already typed into this preamble: Let me have a go.

Who the Audience is:

              When we look at how to adapt these villains, we need to firstly address who the audience is going to be. In my reimaginings of these villains, be aware that I am not aiming these villains to be suitable for children. Matt Reeves, who is directing this film, has already said that he isn’t aiming this film at children, and there’s a more child-friendly Batman film in the works, starring Ben Affleck. So kids, I’m sorry, but fuck off. You don’t get to claim that everything from comics are made for you.

Riddler

The Riddler, whose real name is Edward Nygma, is possibly one of the hardest-done-by villains in comic book history. He’s either shown to be a clever madman or a mad genius, and to be fair, the only time he has been presented outside of the comics with any nuance was in the TV series Gotham, which still screwed the pooch with the ending. So, how would I present him? Simple: ramp up the horror aspects of his character. “But Davey,” I hear you ask, “How do you make The Riddler scary?” Well, voice of the reader that I’m using to push forwards my anecdotes, it’s already been done in more than five films. Simply, watch the Saw franchise for inspiration here. If The Riddler was to appear in a batman film I’ve made, it would be through this narrative:

On New Years’ Day in Gotham, a missing celebrity reappears traumatised and bloody, but missing an arm and with a riddle for GCPD and Batman. Batman solves said riddle which leads him to an address in one of the richer parts of Gotham, where someone in politics has been kidnapped, and a riddle has been painted in their blood on their front door. Eventually, after fourn more survivors are found and rescued by the Dark Knight, The Riddler is captured and jailed inside of Arkham Asylum, but the killings don’t stop as it turns out that the assailant is actually Calendar Man, being manipulated by The Riddler.

The only way Riddler will stop is by Batman revealing his true identity, but when at the end of this movie, Bruce unmasks, Riddler can’t believe such a dumb rich person is really Batman.

This deals with two of the main problems with The Riddler. He is, in essence, a silly character from the golden age of comics, and if it wasn’t for his infamous question mark motif, he’d probably be forgotten. However, he doesn’t need to be a silly character, and he doesn’t need to be an annoying computer-hacking arsehole that they made him in the Arkham series either. Make him legitimately terrifying as jigsaw-meets-Hannibal Lecter, and you have a memorable character who’s catchphrase could give people nightmares for years.

Penguin

Riddle me this, dear readers, how does anyone really take The Penguin as a serious villain in today’s world? Well, in the spirit of the last article, I can give Oswald Cobblepot a more realistic and horrifying makeover.

Firstly, scrap the name at first. Don’t let Cobblepot have that moniker from his first appearance. Whilst The Joker is Batman’s foil, Oswald is Bruce Wayne’s. How I’d tell this story is thus:

Our story is set roughly 3 years into Bruce Wayne being Batman, when we find out that one of Bruce’s oldest friends is returning from London after spending the last 15 years there after his parents were killed. This already sets up Cobblepot as a mirror to Bruce. The two initially get along really well, but after a few moments in the film, we learn that half of the Cobblepot fortune was effectively stolen by Thomas Wayne, after Wayne declared Cobblepot’s father insane.

Following this, Wayne took over half of the Cobblepot entertainment industry, and his mother died from cancer. We never answer whether Cobblepot’s father is still alive, as this can come up again in later films. Oswald uses this leverage to challenge Bruce Wayne’s hold on his company, and at the same time, uses social media in order to get the public to pressure Bruce Wayne. At the same time as this happens, we see Oswald Cobblepot’s temper get progressively worse, until Batman stops him trying to blow up Wayne Manor, in which both the public and Wayne Industries see The Penguin for the monster he is.

Hush

Hush, real name Tommy Elliot is quite a similar villain archetype to that of The Penguin, in that he’s not Batman’s nemesis, but that of Bruce Wayne. Whereas villains like The Riddler and Joker tackle Batman in terms of challenging Batman’s impact, The Penguin and Hush tackle the issue of what privilege and impact that Bruce Wayne possesses. However, due to the age of which Hush was created, there’s a lot of silliness involved in his origin. Whilst I’m not going to make any of these villains gritty and/or realistic like the villains of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, when you strip the silly bollocks away from Hush, he’s one of the few villains that could realistically exist in our world, as well as the one for which Batman inhabits. So, what would I keep and what would I eliminate?

Well, first off, we keep the background. Tommy Elliot is Bruce Wayne through a mirror darkly. Brought up by millionaires in a mansion on the outskirts of Gotham, Tommy Elliot didn’t want for anything in his young age, except for the attention of his parents, who were too busy to look after him and left him with a butler. You can already see the parallels between Bruce and Tommy here, but this is where the kicker is: Like Bruce Wayne, Tommy Elliot loses his parents, but unlike Bruce Wayne, Tommy Elliot succeeds in killing them off himself. Now, I’m not going to keep this element, as you can tell a better and richer story by showing his parents dying in an accident, but with his late parents’ butler disinheriting him. From here, Elliot is sent off to England to live with distant relatives, and trains to become a doctor.

Upon Tommy’s return to Gotham as an adult and a doctor, we see him working at Arkham Institute and Infirmary (which later becomes Arkham Asylum), and we see him seething at Bruce Wayne having everything he thought should be rightfully his, when he realises that he and Bruce are roughly the same build and the same age, and so, slowly but surely, he starts kidnapping and murdering people who share facial aspects with Bruce Wayne in order to pursue the ultimate revenge: Having Bruce Wayne’s face and stealing his fortune. How you’d end this is your personal choice, but I’d recommend ending the story in the same way that the Hush side mission does in Batman: Arkham Knight.

Catwoman

Catwoman is a femme fatale who can really work well in certain settings. She doesn’t challenge Batman because she’s a woman and Batman has been occasionally branded as gay (thank you Dr Frederick Wertham), but because Batman derived for comics for young boys. Yes, of course Batman and Robin share a house (and in the golden age even a bed at some points), because Bruce Wayne’s to a certain degree still 8 years old.

When his parents were killed in Crime Alley, his life was utterly shattered by that tragic event. It thus makes sense that he takes in young wards to train and eventually replace him in the war for Gotham’s soul: He’s a young laddie stuck in a man’s body, and to a certain degree psychologically, the same age as Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and even his own son at various points throughout Batman’s canon.

If there’s a “no girls allowed” theme running through those that join him in his war on Gotham’s criminals, it’s not because Batman’s a closeted gay man (although that might be something I can see happening in the future as the editorial teams at comic publsihers get ever more politically palatable), but because to an eight year old boy, most girls are icky. This is why Catwoman works well: she represents adult maturity and sexuality in a way that Bruce Wayne/Batman doesn’t really understand. The Adam West Batman TV series and the Tim Burton films got a lot of mileage out of this. Kudos to David Mazzucchelli.

So, how do we translate that into the dark, neo-gothic world that the other villains of this article inhabit? Simple: scrap the rubbish origins, and make her story like this.

Selina Kyle is a working class girl who grew up on the streets of Gotham, as basically a street urchin, and honed her craft of stealing from the rich to give to her fellow poor from a young age. This gives her plenty of leverage when as an adult, she crosses paths with Bruce Wayne as a socialite. Jesus, the more I write, the more I realise that she really is a relic of a character from the late 1930’s in America. Anyway, this is where she meets Bruce Wayne, and bacially, you can have that Occupy Wall Street bollocks from The Dark Knight Rises. At the same time, you have Selina Kyle as Catwoman crossing paths with Batman and do you know what? Catwoman is one of those few characters in comic books that is both a relic of a time nearly a century ago and yet someone who can literally be in any genre of Batman film and it works. So, Davey, you clever and sweary bastard, how do you make Catwoman fit in through this lens? Simple. Make her a cross between the Catwoman in Gotham and Black Cat from the PS4 Marvel’s Spider-Man game.

So, you ravenous bastards, did you enjoy this? Well, good news, there’ll be your usual output starting this week, so please keep reading onwards.

Till then, fellow gamers,

Davey.