I can't think of a single way to do Poison Ivy without it descending into camp though.

I really think they could handle Mr Freeze if they wanted to. I don't know about the comics, but I know on the old cartoon, his deal was being all emo about his wife, trying to keep her alive or something? It was very technology-based, so it could probably be made pretty realistically.

He doesn't necessarily have to go around acting like Iceman about things either. It probably wouldn't be hard to find some way for him to be incorporating the ice thing into killing people without it being ridiculous. And no fucking domehead.

I think they could play it very dark and make him fit in with everyone else who's oh-so-sad about a dead loved one. Kinda like Two Face's deal, I guess, but expanded.

Hey, let's make a game out of this! How would you make one of Batman's classic villains fit into the universe of the Dark Knight Trilogy (as TV Tropes calls it)?

The rules are:

- No superpowers, or any other kind of inexplicable "magic" or "alien technology", etc.
- Advanced technology is allowed, but it must have some kind of practical application in current times and have been repurposed by the villain.
- The comic book origin and interpretation (and real name, ideally) of the character must be maintained , at least in part. You can't have Mr. Freeze being an evil ice-cream manufacturer who gets mangled up in his own machines and goes insane or something.


Okay, here's how I'd do Bane in the franchise:

Eduardo Bane was once a petty criminal in Cuba. Imprisoned for theft at an early age, he spent the formative years of his life in a brutal jail. Exposed to the dregs of humanity, he began to adopt a quasi-Nietzschen philosophy. Upon his release, he reformed himself and went to college, eventually gaining a PhD, but never forgot what he saw in prison. He became obsessed by the concept of the Ãœbermensch and began to perfect both his body and his mind. His arrogance grew until he came to regard himself as a kind of god, holding himself apart from humanity, which he considered beneath him. He heard of Gotham City and Batman while experimenting with drug treatments to enhance his physical prowess, which he obtained from the Scarecrow before Batman shut him down. Fascinated by the idea of this so-called "superhero", he decided to make the trip to Gotham to face Batman in mortal combat. To Bane, the clash is one of mighty titans who straddle the world like supermen - the fate of Gotham without the Dark Knight is of no interest to him. Bane is the anti-Batman: a man of rare physical and mental talent who, rather than using his powers to help mankind, instead sees it as his duty to exist as a fearsome example to them. He envisages a world rules by a pantheon of god-like beings (led by himself, naturally) and would like Batman to join him...if he survives their encounter...

Pst..Fox stayed

Just watched Batman Begins again. The Dark Knight made me temporarily forget how good it is. What I've noticed though is how much that final scene sets up the themes of the sequel. Not just the Joker's card, but also the concept of escalation and the little mention of Arkham's inmates still running wild. They've actually managed to condense Batman and Joker's origin stories into one - making one beget the other.

Arch-enemies always have this duality thing going on: opposite sides of the same coin, but Dark Knight made that a concrete theme. Joker and Batman are inextricably linked (which Joker even says - he predicts they'll do this forever, completing each other). The great thing is that that theme is brought through in Dent, who is a victim of this warring duality and comes to physically represent it with his transformation into Two-Face. Literally, Two-Face is half-Joker, half-Batman.

I could write an essay about this.

I have a couple of friends who went to grad school to study comic books...

I think my English department would have frowned on me studying comics. A friend of mine mentioned comics in an analogy about his dissertation once, and his tutor went kind of crazy, saying he shouldn't actually mention comic books or compare them to real books or anything, even though he had no intention of doing anything of the sort. On the other hand, when I had to do a translation of an Anglo-Saxon poem for a project, I was told we could do it however we wanted and (as we happened to have just been on the subject of the recent Beowulf film, based on a comic) she said we could even do it as a comic - though this was presented as a highly maverick idea. I was tempted though...