The Batman 2 Can Pay Off The Dark Knight’s Best Sequel Tease
More than a decade after The Dark Knight, The Batman 2 can pay off Nolan's biggest villain's sequel tease. After Zack Snyder placed Batman alongside other heroes in the team-up movies Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, The Batman saw the caped crusader go back to his detective roots in the first solo Batman film since The Dark Knight Rises. While not an origin story, The Batman featured a younger Bruce Wayne during year two of his vigilante career, meaning that many Batman storylines and characters can yet be adapted.
Before The Dark Knight Rises' eight-year time jump, Nolan's Batman films were also focused on the early days of Batman's career. Batman Begins mixed elements from comic books like Year One as well as original ideas and created an origin story that grounded the character in reality, which prompted the sequel The Dark Knight to be different from anything in the superhero genre. Still a measure for success for comic book adaptations to this day, The Dark Knight proved that it was possible to blend other genres such as crime thrillers into a superhero adventure. Besides the writing and direction, much of The Dark Knight's success had to do with Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker – a version of the character that perfectly fit into Nolan's realistic world.
That said, Joker's unpredictable behavior and use of theatrically were the key to evolving Nolan's realistic world into something that, while still grounded in reality, could make use of Batman's rich mythos of supervillains. This aspect is proved by the line "This city deserves a better class of criminals. And I'm gonna give it to them.". Joker's line towards the end of The Dark Knight is something that could be interpreted as a clear tease of how the Joker was going to inspire more mayhem in Gotham and attract more unconventional villains like himself to the city. That is how Nolan's third Batman film could have explored other of Batman's iconic rogues, such as the Riddler or The Penguin. Following Heath Ledger's death, however, Nolan decided to avoid any connections to the Joker in The Dark Knight Rises, and thus that idea never moved forward. Although in a different context, The Batman set up a similar scenario for its sequel, and The Batman 2 could pay off the "better class of criminals" tease that the Dark Knight trilogy never could.
One of the main themes in The Dark Knight was how Batman's influence in Gotham was going to bring negative consequences despite all the good he was doing. After taking down Falcone in Batman Begins and exposing organized crime, Batman and later Harvey Dent left a lot of Gotham's criminals desperate to the point they had to work with someone they did not comprehend, the Joker. Obviously, Joker was not interested in being a hired gun for the mob, and he eventually made things even worse for Salvatore Maroni, a character The Batman mentioned, and his partners. By transforming Gotham into a war zone and getting to both Lau and the money, the Joker essentially beat the city's mob. That is why he could say he was going to give Gotham a better class of criminals, one that was not driven by money. Therefore, The Dark Knight had a perfect setup for villains from the so-called Batman's rogues gallery to appear in the third film without breaking the sense of realism Nolan had created.
For The Dark Knight's rogues gallery tease to work, elements like Arkham Asylum and the Joker would have to be part of The Dark Knight Rises. However, Nolan decided early on not to have the Joker in The Dark Knight Rises script following Heath Ledger's death, and, without him, it would have been difficult to tell a story of how the villains' actions influenced a new class of criminals in Gotham. To this day, what exactly Nolan's original ideas for the third film in the Dark Knight trilogy were is still a mystery, but either way, The Dark Knight Rises ended up being more of a callback to Batman Begins than to The Dark Knight. The consequences of Harvey Dent's death and Batman's change into a public enemy were still felt in the film, but it was Bane, the League of Shadows, and the legacy of Ra's Al Ghul who were the true focus of The Dark Knight Rises. Apart from Bane and Talia Al Ghul, the only new Batman villain featured in The Dark Knight Rises was Catwoman, and she played more of an anti-hero than an antagonist role.
Similar to what happened in Nolan's first two Batman films, The Batman also saw Gotham's mob take a huge hit after the Riddler exposed Carmine Falcone and his complex scheme. Falcone was the one holding most of Gotham's crime together under his influence, and with his death, the city risks becoming a no man's land. Not only that, but Gotham will also have to deal with a state of public calamity caused by the Riddler's flood, which will make restoring the order a very difficult mission for Batman. Furthermore, The Batman is also setting up a new class of criminals rising in the city.
Gotham now has a power vacuum following Falcone's death, and The Batman has already teased many villains who could thrive in the scenario. Colin Farrell's Penguin is running free and already knows Gotham's underworld, the Riddler survived and is currently on Arkham, and the Joker not only exists but also already has a history with Batman. With several of Batman's most iconic villains introduced and a city that is no longer controlled by Carmine Falcone and the mob, The Batman has the perfect setup for a sequel in which Gotham has a "better class of criminals" as The Dark Knight originally teased in 2008. Unlike Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, Matt Reeves' Batman franchise will expand through spin-offs and could be the beginning of a Batman universe that will have the opportunity to explore the characters' mythos to its full extent.
Source: Screenrant
Post a Comment