Batman In The Movies Part Two: Nolan's Villains

Why do we go and see Batman movies? Is it for Batman himself? The compelling story? Or the villains? Personally I go for the villains, because the one thing that's the same about all these movies is Batman. I like to see something new. I was originally planning to talk about all the villais across all the Batman films, but that would take far too long, and when you consider the amount of villains in the 1966 film alone, the post wold take anyone all day to read by the time I made it to 'The Dark Knight Rises'. So I am going to talk about the villains Nolan used, and how they differ from previous incarnations. I am not including the 1966 'Batman'. I am also not going to include 'The Dark Knight Rises' version of Catwoman, because she is more of an anti-hero than a villain. Warning, this blog entry contains spoilers.

Ra's Al Ghul and The League of Shadows and The Scarecrow
In the 2005 'Batman Begins' we see how Bruce Wayne is trained by The League of Shadows, who are led by Ra's Al Ghul (played by Liam Neeson), we have never seen these in previous live-action films, but they have appeared many times throughout the comics and the animated TV series. What makes them such dangerous foes? Well for one thing they're all trained assassins. Also they are large in numbers and have been around for hundreds of years. We find out in the film that they want to cleanse Gotham, because it has apparently became too corrupt. We also find out that they are responsible for events like the fire of London, they claim that after these traumatic events, the cities they target are given a new start. They had previously attempted to destroy Gotham through new tactics like economics, but we find out that people like Bruce Wayne's parents interfered and slowed the progress. So the fact that they aren't after Batman in particular (although they do make an attempt on his life), makes them dangerous, because he isn't fighting for himself, but for the whole city. A noticeable change from the comics is the lazarus pit, which Ra's uses to keep himself young and live forever, unfortunately the pit has certain side events, most notably insanity. This was left out from Nolan's film, probably because he wanted to use the characters, but didn't want to stray from the realism he was trying to create.

Dr. Jonathan Crane a.k.a The Scarecrow (Cillian murphy) also makes an appearance in this film, he also appears in 'The Dark Knight' and 'The Dark Knight Rises'. Crane is a psychiatrist that is fasciated by fear, it is mentioned in the the movie that he conducted experiments on patients from Arkham Asylum. He uses a concentrated hallucinogenic gas to force his victims to imagine/think that their worst nightmares are happening to them. He uses the image of a scarecrow to put fear into his poisoned victims. Depending on how much poison he uses, his victims can have permanent brain damage and even die from a concentrated dose.

 The Joker and Two-Face
In the 2008 'The Dark Knight' Nolan introduced the audience to his version of the Joker, as you can see (left) he varies from the typical comic book look. Nolan's version of this character (Heath Ledger) is more of a terrorist than a super villain. He uses war paint to intimidate his prey, it is clear that he is crazy, but at the same time he is a genius. The origins of this character are unknown in this film, throughout the film The Joker provides with with different stories about how he got his scars, each one is highly convincing, but we are given no indication which one, if any of them, are true. The Joker is the polar opposite to Batman, which is what makes him such a threat. He's unpredictable, he claims to be a man who doesn't make plans, but he always seems to have a back up, or an "ace in the whole".

The character previously appeared in the 1989 'Batman' (portrayed by Jack Nicholson), as you can see by the picture beneath this paragraph, Nicholson's character was much more related to the comics, and although his make-up doesn't look that good by todays standard, his performance is still top notch. Nicholson's Joker uses comedy a lot more in his plans, with more prank related traps and devices. He uses more props than Ledger's Joker.

Harvey Dent/Two-Face also makes an appearance in 'The Dark Knight' (portrayed by Aaron Eckhard), who starts off as a protagonist trying to clean up Gotham city, but after his fiance Rachel is killed in an explosion, which leaves him horrible scarred, The Joker manages to push the blame to Gordon and Batman, corrupting Dent. Potentially this could undo all the good that Dent as done, because if the courts find out anything bad about him, then all the criminals he got locked up would be released. This character previously appeared in the 1995 'Batman Forever' (picture below), again this was a much more comical related character (played by Tommy Lee Jones), and as you can see in the picture, that version of the character got his wounds from a chemical related attack, which was so traumatic that it split is personality in too, whereas Eckhart's character was always fond of making it look like he left things to dance but didn't (using a coin with heads on both sides) and his appearance was brought about by petrol tanks exploding (then one side of his coin was burnt too). What makes both of these characters so dangerous is that they too are unpredictable, everything they do depends on chance, on the flip of a coin.

Bane and Talia Al Ghul
Bane (Tom Hardy) is the latest villain to be added to Nolan's collection. Unlike the comics where he is a mexican wrestler who make himself extremely strong through the use of a toxin called venom, Nolan's incarnation is an extremely strong and violent man who's methods are too extreme even for The League of Shadows. He was cast out by Ra's Al Ghul. We find out that he and Talia Al Ghul have a forbidden love relationship, which also added to the reason why he was cast out. What makes Bane so dangerous is that he has the destructive capability of The Joker, but also the strength to take on Batman in hand to hand combat. Bane iconically breaks Batman's back int he comics. Comparing him to the Bane (Robert Swenson) from 'Batman & Robin' (1997), see picture beneath this paragraph, Nolan Bane is much cooler. Although the 1997 Bane was more relatable to the comics, 'Batman & Robin' is a terrible film and Bane is portrayed as Poison Ivy's servant with no mind of his own. Notice that their masks are different, whereas the 1997 mask looks like a wrestles mask, which has tube going into his head for the venom and the 2012 mask clearly doesn't serve that purpose. The 2012 mask turns out to be a giant pain reliever. Bane was involved in something that resulted in him being in permanent, unbearable Bane, so he has to wear that mask to be able to function. As a result of this he can feel no pain. The mask also makes his voice sound quite menacing, and makes it difficult to read his expressions (so you can never read him).

I previously mentioned that Talia Al Ghul and Bane had a love interest. Talia is the daughter of Ra's Al Ghul. She has a vendetta against Batman after he caused the death of her father (note that she didn't kill him, but he chose not to save him). Together with Bane she planned to finish her fathers work in Gotham, she uses Bane to break Batman, and force him to watch helpless as his city tears itself apart. She wants him to feel her pain before he dies. She played a major part in the downfall of Wayne Enterprises.

I hope that you have enjoyed reminiscing the villains from Nolan's Batman films, and seeing how much better they are from previous incarnations by other directors.

Personally for me, The Joker is the best villain, Nicholson and Ledger both portray the character brilliantly, but none of them have managed to do a better laugh that Mark Hamill's (Hamill a.k.a Luck Skywalker, voiced The Joker in 'Batman: The Animated Series', many of the animated movies and the Arkham Asylum/City games).