Daily Batman: Pulled by unseen forces

via.

Schnitzt einer eine Marionette, wo man den Strick hereinhängen sieht, an dem sie gezerrt wird.

We are only puppets, our dangling strings pulled by unseen forces.

(Karl Georg Büchner, Dantons Tod. Act II, Scene 3. 1835).

Daily Batman: Talk nerdy to me — Nostalgia for that which never was

Caroline Munro, the fantasy Catwoman cast in this poster, cross-reference for the young’uns:

Catch Ms. Munro in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Starcrash, and the Hammer horror films. You can also see her go head-to-head on the small screen with Joanna Lumley — Pats from AbFab and a Bond girl herself — in “The Angels of Death,” which is Season 2, Episode 2 of The New Avengers (original airdate September 29, 1978). Catfiiiiight!

Ms. Munro was also attached through most of the 1980’s to a developing big-screen Dr. Who project which sadly never materialized.

But for me, Caroline Munro is now and ever shall be smokin’ hot helicopter pilot Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me, the tenth James Bond flick. Having worked her way up to righthand-man status in an industry traditionally dominated by males, and with her whole life ahead of her, the lovely but deadly young henchwoman is grievously murdered by 007 when he shoots a missile at her from under the ocean. Dick move.

Oh, my lord, why have I not done a Bond Girls series?! I’m a horrible, selfish, remiss person! I’ll get on that, stat. Promise. Let’s make it a February theme! If you have a favorite, shoot me pictures and I will try to include them.

Daily Batman: Stille Nacht

Daily Batman: Tzin-Tzin’s plan is a gobsmacker

No way, dude — stop him! Even though he is just thinking about Tzin-Tzin’s plan, look how Batman’s mouth has dropped open in outrage and chagrin. Go get ‘im, buddy!

Daily Batman: Talk nerdy to me — third Nolanverse film rumor round-up

My Bat-ticipation has been kicked in to high gear since the announcement several months ago that Chris Nolan and his brother had completed the script for the third film in Nolan’s Batman Begins series. Stars are aligning, schedules are floating, and everyone and their dog thinks they have the inside scoop on the plot.

I can play that game, too.

Rumors and speculation, ahoy!

Rumor: The new film is titled The Dark Knight Rises. Potential truthiness: Total. The studio says yes, that’s the title, but Bale claimed while promoting his new film The Fighter that he wasn’t sure that would be the final title, saying that he’d wait until he “heard it from Chris.” The title is officially entered on IMDB as The Dark Knight Rises and I’d tend to think at this point will likely not change.

Rumor: Scripts will go to the actors in January, principal photography will begin in May, and the film will be in the can by November. Potential truthiness: This comes directly from Michael Caine, who is delightful and talented and a gift to generations of moviegoers, and who could still easily be completely wrong. Shooting will take place in New Orleans, which will give Gotham a seamier, heavier look than the crispy, boxy look of the grim Chicago Gotham we’ve seen in the last two films. The tragic poverty in the Ninth Ward would be a realistic backdrop for action in the Narrows, too.

Rumor: The Riddler will be the chief antagonist. Potential truthiness: Practically nil. This long shopped-around speculation has been pretty much permanently tabled due to some of the following rumors.

Rumor: Tom Hardy has been cast in the film. Potential truthiness: 100%, apparently. Awesome. The guy has great action chops and his looks are total female fan service. Aces in my book. The question of who he will play is where things get dicey for me.

Rumor: Tom Hardy will play Dr. Hugo Strange. Potential truthiness: Fair to middling — I’d say this rumor is at least on the right track, if not outright true. One of the first villains in the original DC comics, Dr. Strange is, in recent incarnations, a police psychologist who develops a bad case of bat-mania.

In the Legends of the Dark Knight comic series, in an arc which takes place roughly contemporaneous to the events of Year One, Long Halloween, etc., from whose stories the Nolans have taken inspiration in the first two films, Dr. Strange is employed by the Gotham City Police Department to help develop a profile of Batman in order to bring him to justice. The search is lead — and, of course, secretly hampered — by newly-promoted Commissioner James Gordon. The timing works out great and the plots match up well with where we left off in The Dark Knight. In fact …

Rumor: The Dark Knight Rises is based on the Prey arc from the Legends of the Dark Knight line. Potential truthiness: Somewhere between somewhat likely and “it would be a good idea if it is true.” This is a very recent rumor. Like, last week. It’s a plausible and good suggestion for the plot, but so was a fourth Spider-Man movie with Lizard as the villain and instead it’s back to high school like frigging chumps. I am cautiously optimistic about this rumor.

In the Prey story, Dr. Hugo Strange initially seeks to find Batman, who is Gotham’s Public Enemy No. 1 at this time, but grows to seek to be Batman, even successfully supplanting the vigilante and pulling some pretty whack shenanigans. He accomplishes this in part by brainwashing a fellow find-the-bat task force member, the mouthbreathing leg-breaker Sgt. Max Cort. Dr. Strange grooms Cort to become a vigilante, called Night Scourge, to flush Batman out of hiding.

This aspect of the plot dovetails very reasonably with the vigi-wanna-bes we saw plaguing Gotham City at the beginning of The Dark Knight. In the comic, Cort eventually kidnaps the mayor’s daughter under hynoptic suggestion from Strange. We met the mayor in the last film (Richard Alpert from Lost — that guy seriously gets around) so this, too, has conceivably got some decent groundwork already laid.

Hardy as British criminal Charles Bronson in Bronson.

Rumor that I am starting: If the former rumor is true, and the plot is based on Prey, then Tom Hardy is likelier playing Sgt. Cort than Dr. Strange. Potential truthiness: Probably zero. What the heck do I know? It’s just how I’d do it. The guy’s hunky and action-star-looking. He just seems a better fit for young, fit Max Cort than Hugo Strange, who is older, has a bald egg head, a phatty beard, and weird sunglasses. I’m admittedly coming at this from a shallow place: I really hope not to watch handsome Tom Hardy’s good looks get hopelessly mutilated to play the puppetmaster part. I’d rather see him play a hot hypnotized mouthbreather than shave his head again like he did for Bronson. I’m very shallow.

Rumor: Six actresses have been auditioned for two female roles. Reports are that one role is Bruce’s love interest and the other is a villain. The actresses are Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Kiera Knightly, and, for some implausible reason, Blake Lively. Potential truthiness: Pfft. These same names, except Lively, and sometimes Marion Cotillard and Angelina Jolie, have been getting tossed around since before the script was even finished. It’s just fantasy comic movie casting — we all do it, and until I see a picture of Anne Hathaway and Natalie Portman sitting beside Christopher Nolan holding folders that say “Top Secret Batman 3 Screen Test Script,” I have no reason to believe that those names should get any more credence than the ones I come up with myself in the car at long red lights.

Now, the rumors about the characters are new and much more interesting. Catwoman does enter the Prey story; tantalizingly, so does the Scarecrow in a later Strange arc in the Legends of the Dark Knight series (more Cillian Murphy? yes, please). And I’ve been saying for, like, three years that it’s time for some Talia Al-Ghul up in this piece. I even said she should be played by Rachel Weisz.

Besides old and easily wrong favorites like Catwoman and Talia, other potential female characters being floated around are Julie Madison, the Year One actress and early girlfriend of Bruce Wayne, which has a strong possibility of being true, and Detective Sarah Essen, who was not Bruce’s but Jim Gordon’s love interest (he cheats on his wife, Barbara, who we’ve seen a bit of in the last two films) at an earlier point in Batman: Year One. I don’t see it. First of all, Sarah popped up when Gordon was still a lieutenant, which ship has now sailed thanks to his promotion into Commisioner Loeb’s old spot — you need Loeb around and alive for the thing to work because it was his discovery of the affair and subsequent efforts to blackmail Essen and Gordon that lead to Essen ending the affair and leaving for New York — and the whole sad affair thing does not really fit with the Gordon we’ve been given so far in these films. Unless they are planning to change everything we think we know about Jim Dandy, or divorce or kill off Barbara (he did eventually marry Sarah after he and Barbara had been divorced), I don’t think that Ms. Essen will be appearing in the Nolanverse anytime soon.

Oh, man, I’m tired of doing this. I got more to say about the Scarecrow angle but I’ll have to come back to all of it later.

Daily Batman: Enter Talia

Talia al Ghul by Stephane Roux.

Said it before but I say again:

Mother of Bruce Wayne’s child.

RACHEL WEISZ.

If I could design subliminal messages, I would pipe those two things in to Chris Nolan’s dreams, I swar to gar.

She’s not getting any younger, Mr. Nolan. But you know what she is getting? Ever-more-perfect to play the part of Talia and take these films to the Next Level. Already had her dad as a villain, and his invisible hand is present in the sequel (the drugs Dr. Crane is still moving around GC in The Dark Knight are obviously chemically based on the hallucinogen he weaponized for Ra’s when he was a little more, ahem, put together; as he could have no present access to original stockpiles of that drug’s ingredients due to the plant’s destruction during the riots in the Narrows which concluded Batman Begins, Crane is likely acquiring the material to continue the synthesized manufacture of the fear drug from the League of Shadows, who’d provided him with his chemicals in the past. Yes?). Tie it all in and bring us home by bringing Talia in and let’s do this!

Daily Batman: Miss Kitty workin’ it, social networking edition

Name: Miss Kitty
Sex/Age female, 23
Location: Gotham City, United States
Current Mood: workin’ it! 😉

Robin: Good job that love stuff doesn’t work on me — I’m way too young for that sort of thing!

Yes. Yes it’s age that’s the stumbling block. …

Batman: What about Robin?
Catwoman: Hmmm. . . I know. We’ll kill him.

Robin: Holy caffeine!

(all stills and quotes from “Catwoman Goes to College,” Batman, Season 2, Episode 49. Original airdate February 22, 1967.)

Daily Batman: Gotham Sirens

Art by Dustin Nguyen

Daily Batman: Gotham Girls, “Sirens” edition w/ bonus Mr. J

l to r: Harley Quinn, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy.

Cover art from Batman Reborn, “Gotham City: Sirens” Issue No. 4, November 2009. (actual release date: 30 Sept 09) Written by Paul Dini, art and cover by Guillem March. (go buy it go buy it go buy it — I know I am hopefully going to just as soon as I submit and am paid for the project on The Godfather I’ve been working on.) I guess the Joker shows up in this one (he’s been MIA since Batman RIP, according to the divine comicvine), and I somehow only just heard about this after Halloween!

From the look of things, he is none too pleased that his shrink and erstwhile girlfriend Dr. Harleen Quinzel has been palling around with that guy Hush. (You always knew he’d kill her.) So last week, finally having some free time, I hit up Bonanza Books and Comics looking for this and they said they had sold whatever copies they had to begin with, but assured me they’d get some more. Booyakasha: air heel click!

Daily Batman: Batgirl and Robin are so grounded

Like, oh my god, dude, you should have been there.

We got in to Bruce’s liquor supply and went out to the Reservoir by Robinson Park and got thrashed. Toe up. Spring break, y’all. Woo-hoo!

(Seriously, he makes those kids work too hard.)

Daily Batman: Meaghan Quinn Cute LJ Batgirl meme edition

So a while back there was this meme going around on livejournal where it was a Thing to draw Batgirl. This is one of my favorites, drawn by Meaghan Quinn, who does the webcomic “Eat the Roses.” I think it’s really cute and fun. A lot of the sketches that came out of this meme were fun reinterpretations of the character, and I liked those too, but there was just something about this one that I thought was really well-composed, and captured the essence of the character in a new and unusual way without deliberately putting her in a different setting, outfit, or semi-nude situation as a prop to change the perspective. Do you know what I mean? She is recognizably herself, but in a fresh light:

…do you see? She seems young and kind of a little funky, a little slinkier and more confident than do-goody or ass-kicky, but also maybe slightly “Here goes nothin’!” about it, like it is her first or second night out on Gotham City’s rooftops and she’s about to tuck her hair behind her ears, pluck up her courage, and soar right offa that building. Does this make sense? Oh, god, I’m still talking.

I’m pretty high right now on Advil Cold and Sinus and I don’t know if any of this even makes sense. Not gonna lie.

Daily Batman: They’re coming to take you away

Welcome to the monkeyhouse!

Need a rest? Dr. Jeremiah Arkham has plenty of room for you. It’s no trouble at all.