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So, saw some of the choices for a “rugged, established” Batman recently and I can honestly say I’d be happy with most of them, except for Matthew Goode and sorry, Gosheads, I think Drive should forever be as close as we get to a Ryan Gosling Batman movie. That said, let’s talk villains.
Before, I said an arrangement with Lex Luthor as the brains and Metallo as the muscle made a lot of sense to me, but I can also see how you’d want to go the classic crossover route and have one villain from either franchise. Obviously, Lex is going to be representing the Superfamily, which sounds good to me. Which leaves a Batvillain to be “the muscle.” Because c’mon, people have a hard enough time buying the Penguin and Riddler giving Batman a hard time. Add Superman to the mix? No way.
Now, what’s interesting to me about this ‘MoSverse” is that it’s clearly more fantastical than the Nolanverse, so you can get into Batman’s more sci-fi rogues. The guys who can really put a hurt on Batman OR Superman. And yeah, I’m aware you could handwave something about Lex using Kryptonite or red-sun radiation to weaken Superman to the point that fucking Crazy Quilt is a threat, but c’mon. Let’s get nuts.
1. Mr. Freeze. As TDKR proved, it’s now okay to try again with all the villains Batman & Robin ruined. And you’ve got to admit, Freeze is pretty A-list. He’s got basically Iron Man armor that, souped up, could be a threat to Superman, and a killer origin story. The main concern would be that, at the end of the day, he’s just got a freeze-ray. It’s a little boring. Either he’s frozen you or he’s trying to freeze you.
2. Poison Ivy. In recent comics, Ivy’s been able to create armies of Feraks, summon giant plant tentacles, and just generally fuck shit up. With some, I don’t know, Kryptonite fertilizer, she could be a threat to Kal-El. Plus, it’d be nice commentary on the trendy “green” corporate movement to have Lex ally with her to ‘save the environment’ when he really just wants to kill Superman—something almost as evil as getting people to watch NBC. Plus, I read a lot of feminist blogs, and I’m pretty sure their main criticism of the Batman movies is that there just aren’t enough bisexual redhead sluts in exploitative costumes.
I kid, but please picture Amy Adams getting into the obligatory heroine/villainess fight with a green Christina Hendricks. If you don’t want to see that, please check the url, because you may be at the wrong blog. Plus, Ivy could use her pheromones to control Superman, leading to the Batman/Superman dust-up we all want.
3. Clayface. Again, killer origin, and his power set is arguably more cinematic than Mr. Freeze’s, if perhaps a bit reminiscent of the T-1000 and Sandman. And his shapeshifting would make for a good plot of him framing either Batman or Superman or both to further Lex’s evil schemes. I guess the problem is, at the end of the day, he’s clay. Superman either freezes him or cooks him, then throws him into space, fight over. Maybe you could screw around with the power set, make it so he can transfer his consciousness through the Earth or something to “possess” random patches of mud and go kaiju-sized, but still… a sixty-foot-tall mudman is pretty much the same threat to Superman as a six-foot-tall mudman. Maybe if there were some kind of ‘Superman Lives’ Shadow-Caster or other power drainer, then you could have Superman believably getting his ass kicked.
