Which villains should be in the next Batman movie?

[Druyn]

They kind of blew the load early with Joker. I mean, he's the perfect fit for batman, he is the perfect compliment to his personality, the ultimate opposite. He both compliments and offsets the nature of the Bat. You can't do another character piece like that.

Who does that leave? A character who can simply *beat* the Bat and open the way for a more expansive story;

Bane.

Hell yeah, Bane. The only man who has totally crushed Batman. I dont see any other decent villain that can be used effectively. The Riddler and The penguin or just jokes. Catwoman and Poison Ivy are decent, but after the Joker, incomparable. And none of them have ever really bested Batman. Bane has. Could introduce Azrael that way too, but I hope they wont anyways.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

BANE.


We need to see someone who can challenge Batman PHYSICALLY; the last two have taxed him mentally.

Okay, let's get a refresher of villans who have already appeared in (recent) Batman Movies and which movies they appeared in (as well as the actors who played them). (Wiki Source [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_franchise_media#Theatrical_movies])

Batman: 1989
+The Joker (Jack Nicholson)

Batman Returns: 1992
+Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer, not Haley Berry)
+The Penguin (Danny DeVito)

Batman Forever: 1995
+The Riddler (Jim Carrey)
+Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones)

Batman and Robin: 1997
+Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
+Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman)
+Bane (Robert Swenson)

Batman Begins: 2005
+Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson; Yes, the Falcone crime family is actually canon, though not quite as famous as the more-costumed villans)
+Ra's al Ghul (Liam Neeson)
+The Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy)

The Dark Knight: 2008
+The Joker (Heath Ledger)
+Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart)

In other words: all of the villans before Begins are going to be carrying real serious baggage that they're going to need a clean break from. I feel that only the Pengiun and Riddler are salvagable from those unfortunate movies, mainly because they were portrayed so poorly/cartoonishly that a more serious rehash of the character is possible.

And for those who believe that Batman needs a more physical opponent: I think that the new idea of Batman as more of a ninja/detective (rather than the head-on fighter that came to be in the 90's interations) would make such a move counter to the new feel of the movie series. Killer Croc could be done, but it just wouldn't make sense that a deformed hulk would suddenly appear in Gothum City. He probably could be done as an imported mob hitman targeting rival mobsters or Public/Corporate figures, but he couldn't be brought in targeting Batman himself because (a) the incident with the Joker would probably discourage any mob don from pushing forward with trying that again and (b) it just would feel like the same plot of The Dark Knight.

EDIT: As for Bane, the complexity of his background (Political prisoner and prison fighter with a high intellect and excellent education who gets used as a test subject for the Venom drug) and motivations (intially to simply be the one who takes down Batman) would be very hard to put into a movie well. Combine that with the Batman and Robin trainwreck that turned him into a mindless hulk and there is little reason to try this character any time soon.

 

[octafish]

The film opens with the hunt for Zsasz as he is on a killing spree, it shows the Bat tracking him through his kills, eventually moving in to take him down, when suddenly Zsasz is caught by someone else. An independent police consultant called Edward Nashton. Nashton is a brilliant detective despite obviously suffering from OCD. Nashton is then hired by Gotham to find Harvey Dent's killer, Batman. Nashton tries to track down the Bat but cannot find him, so he starts staging crimes to lure him out, leaving clues because he underestimates the Bat's intelligence. This spirals out of control with Nashton becoming more and more obsessed with besting the Bat, and staging more and more dangerous crimes, but unable to stop leaving riddles because they have become a manifestation of his OCD. I'd love to see a scene where the Riddler manages to throw the Bat through a wall, (either using a trap or some burly goons, he is an intellectual challenge not a physical one) and steps through the doorway into the next room to continue the attack but has to stop to turn the light switch on and off six times.

I also wouldn't mind seeing Catwoman because I like the way she confuses Batman. Especially when she is a cat-burglar/protector of the underdog rather than a main villain.

Mr Freeze and Preston Payne as Clayface are my favorite villains because they are so tortured, but I don't think they'll fit into the Nolan films.

 

[Joe Matsuda]

The Riddler

and Clayface...

and maybe even the Ratcatcher, just because he's pretty dang b-list-tastic

 

[Dags90]

I would like to see Clayface, I've been rooting for Clayface since the first movie. Clayface has a workable backstory complete with its own moral lesson on vanity.