Holy casting announcements Batman! With casting rumors over the last several months ranging from the intriguing (Johnny Depp as The Riddler) to the ridiculous (Eddie Murphy as The Riddler) it was nice to get some solid news on director Christopher Nolan's upcoming film The Dark Knight Rises. Academy Award nominee and current Hollywood A-Lister Anne Hathaway has been cast as Selina Kyle/Catwoman beating out Jessica Biel and Keira Knightley. Equally stunning was the announcement that Inception's Tom Hardy, already confirmed as the sequel's main villain, will be playing the role of Bane.
I think Nolan made the right call in both of these decisions. First Hathaway. Not only is she a name in Hollywood but she is a hell of a good actress. Her role in Brokeback Mountain is severely overlooked and her Oscar nominated performance in Rachel Getting Married is equally stunning. Hathaway has the kind of acting chops to go toe-to-toe with actors like Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman. Furthermore, (and I know I'm going to get a lot of shit from women for this) she has the body to play the role. Let's face it, almost every depiction of Catwoman in the DC Universe is a sultry, raven haired, voluptuous vixen whose breasts are about as realistic as the precepts of Scientology. But that's the character. Physcially I think Hathaway "fills out" this role in more ways than one. She possesses an inate sexiness that I thought was lacking in Michelle Phieffer's portrayal in 1992's Batman Returns. Phieffer's turn came off as slutty rather than sexy. And she was a blond. Weak.
More impressive to me was the announcement that Bane is going to be the main villain in The Dark Knight Rises. I wrote several weeks back about the possible villains in the next film and Bane was low on my radar. This is exciting news though because it gives Nolan the chance to wash away the horrible memories of Bane from the reprehensible Batman and Robin. Bane is actually a villain pumped with a super-steroid called Venom who is also Batman's match intelligence wise. I won't go into all the various backstory of Bane (if you're interested try Googleing the character) but suffice it to say that the Knightfall story arc back in the early 1990s involving Bane was one of the best ever in the Batman universe. As you can probably see by the picture of Hardy above from the gritty prison drama Bronson, he's more than physically capable of doing the role.
With principal photography about four months away I can't wait to see what the next casting announcement holds in store!
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