Compared to other superhero franchises, The Dark Knight trilogy features a disproportionate number of villains. A few of the standout antagonists in The Dark Knight Rises are Tom Hardy as Bane, Cillian Murphy as Jonathan Crane, and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent.
Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplays for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises with his brother Christopher Nolan, the director, recently claimed that another villain who was never seen in a movie was supposed to make an appearance.
During an interview with Happy Sad Confused, the Person of Interest creator, 47, talked about the antagonists in the seventh-highest-grossing film before focusing on Bane (Tom Hardy). Nolan talked about exploring “ideas about the Riddler”.
The Dark Knight Rises: The Riddler’s Missed Opportunity in Christopher Nolan’s Trilogy
When it comes to the Batman film franchise, there are a plethora of iconic villains to choose from. From the Joker to Two-Face, the Caped Crusader has faced off against some of the most notable baddies in comic book history. But did you know that The Dark Knight Rises’ co-screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan, originally thought of a different villain for the movie?
Apparently, The Dark Knight Rises, the trilogy’s last flick, nearly included the Riddler (or Edward Nigma), as Nolan recently disclosed on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast. They ultimately decided not to use Edward, however, because:
“I sort of started to play with ideas about The Riddler and what could be done with that character. But it did feel like it was close enough to the space of what we’d done with Heath [Ledger] that you really needed to…shift there.’”
Bill Finger and Dick Sprang created Riddler, who made his comic book debut in Detective Comics #140 in 1948. It was never going to be easy to surpass Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight (2008), since he set such a high bar. Even so, it was a sensible choice for The Dark Knight Rises to conclude the trilogy with Tom Hardy’s Bane, who posed a serious threat to Christian Bale’s Batman.
Despite complimenting Bane on his “menacing voice” and “body language-driven performance”, IGN called him “that bit less interesting to watch” than Ledger’s Joker. According to Variety, Chuck Dixon, who co-created the character Bane, stated that Bane is “far more akin to an Occupy Wall Street type if you are looking to cast him politically”.
As one of the few comic book characters who had truly physically broken Batman, Bane’s appearance in the final chapter of the Christopher Nolan trilogy inspired Bruce Wayne to push himself even further.
The Dark Knight Reimagined: A Look at the Could-Have-Been Villains
Co-screenwriter David S. Goyer of The Dark Knight Rises told Digital Spy that he intended to use characters that had never been seen in live-action before.
Goyer explicitly said he did not want to use Catwoman and Penguin as villains right away because of their lengthy histories of appearances. On the other hand, The Dark Knight almost immediately focused on the Joker, since it was obvious that the legendary Clown Prince of Crime would serve as the main antagonist in the film.
Anne Hathaway made her debut as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. But the studio was not originally planning on including Bane. In an interview with Josh Horowitz for his podcast Happy Sad Confused, Goyer claimed that the production company had pressured Leonardo DiCaprio to star as Riddler in The Dark Knight Rises:
“After ‘The Dark Knight,’ the head of Warner Bros. at the premiere said, ‘You got to do the Riddler. Leo as the Riddler. You got to tell Chris, Leo as the Riddler. And I was just, ‘Dude, that’s not the way we work’.”
From that point on, Batman’s next adversary would be determined by the plot’s structure, as Goyer informed Horowitz:
“[The thinking was] ‘Let’s do it in a very naturalistic way … let’s figure out what kind of story we want to tell and what we thematically want to explore with Bruce and then, let’s figure out a villain that fits that story’.”
As per Goyer, the writer turned down Warner Bros.’ request for DiCaprio to play Riddler. Even if the former was not in favor of Edward Nigma playing a part, it is reasonable to suppose there was a lot of talk about it given that Jonathan Nolan said the Riddler was given serious consideration.
The Dark Knight Rises is streaming on Max.
