How do you solve a problem like Catwoman? It's a question Christopher Nolan must already have asked himself and presumably answered, given the announcement that Anne Hathaway will play the character in his third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. I was fully expecting the film-maker to avoid including Selina Kyle in the new film, despite the character's prominence in the caped crusader's canon, and the fact that she is probably the only figure capable of rivalling the impact of the Joker..
Why? Catwoman is a cultural icon, and Nolan had previously hinted that The Dark Knight Rises would be very much a continuation of the story begun in The Dark Knight, with Batman on the run and being hunted by both mob and law. There just didn't seem time for a Catwoman origins story if the trilogy were to be smartly rounded off in the space of a few hours.
Perhaps if Nolan had committed for a fourth or fifth movie, matters might have been different. Kyle could have been introduced in Batman 3 and allowed to transform into her alter ego in a future film. But, despite the fact that only the name Selina Kyle (not Catwoman) is mentioned in Warner Bros' press release, that seems unlikely now, such will be the clamour to see the character on screen.
The Dark Knight Rises suddenly looks far more like a standalone movie. Nolan has a big hitter with the potential to make us forget all about Heath Ledger's fine performance in the last film, and an actor with the presence to personify the character. In the comics, Kyle has been depicted variously as a prostitute, a petty burglar and an international thief and bounty-hunter, among other incarnations. I'd expect Nolan to avoid any supernatural overtones to the character, as they would stand out like a sore thumb in his more realistic Batman universe. So don't expect Kyle to have nine lives like the Michelle Pfeiffer version from Tim Burton's Batman Returns, or return to life after getting licked by some street moggies. There has been another, more recent Catwoman, of course – namely Halle Berry's ill-fated Patience Phillips incarnation from 2004's Catwoman. Quite why the film-makers opted not to utilise the traditional Kyle alter ego is beyond me, but at least it allows Nolan to completely ignore what was a pretty anodyne movie.
Catwoman is traditionally something of an antihero rather than a full-on villain, a character created by Bob Kane to personify the sublime paradox of male fear and attraction towards the opposite sex. Will Nolan choose to have her switching sides between the Dark Knight and his enemies, upholding that age-old prejudice, which posits women as unknowable, mercurial creatures?
Nolan also announced today that Tom Hardy will play Bane, who one might expect to be the more traditional bad guy. The character is a relatively new one, who only arrived in the comics in the 1990s. Yet he maintains the distinction of having bested Batman physically and even broke Bruce Wayne's back at one point, leaving him in a wheelchair. While that would certainly be one way to round off the trilogy, the movie is called The Dark Knight Rises, so unless Nolan is being rather disingenuous I suspect we can look forward to a more upbeat finale.
And where does Batman go once the suit has been packed away, and Nolan has flown the coop? There were hints this week that Darren Aronofsky, who was almost given the job of reviving the franchise before Nolan's arrival, might be in with a shout once again. In an interview with the website Clothes on Film (which conspicuously avoids much discussion of the sartorially linked elements of his career), Aronofsky mentions that he's working on a Batman comic book that would tell the Batman: Year One story he wanted to bring to the big screen back in 2000.
"We're doing a comic book of a script that's really hard to make and we're going to do a comic version first and see what happens," said the film-maker. Hints of an Aronofsky Batman revival there? Well, let's just see what he makes of rescuing Wolverine first.
The maker of Pi, Requiem for a Dream and the enthralling Black Swan might just be the man to go to if Warner Bros wants something a little more leftfield – perhaps combining the oddball tendencies of Tim Burton's take with Nolan's rugged aesthetic, but losing the former's sense of high camp. It would be nice to think, however, that the current penchant for rebooting characters before the dust has even been allowed to settle on their current incarnation (à la Spider-Man) is not set to become the norm. Perhaps that's an argument in favour of Nolan leaving the story open-ended, but even with a slew of new characters to introduce and presumably some explanation of the Joker's disappearance, I can't see that happening. One thing's for sure, there's going to be an awful lot going on in The Dark Knight Rises.
