The New Catwoman

Warner Bros. announced on Jan. 19 that Anne Hathaway would officially be the latest starlet to portray Catwoman in Chris Nolan's upcoming film The Dark Knight Rises.  The character has had a grand tradition within Batman media, Anne Hathaway being the sixth woman to play the femme fatale in a live-action role.  Before her came Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Halle Berry -- not counting the character's various animated incarnations.  But the two big questions here:  Can Hathaway pull it off?  and is it a good idea to have Catwoman in the third film at all?  To both, my answer is yes.



I haven't seen Anne in anything very dramatic or action-oriented, but I feel like she could embody Catwoman's slightly hostile sexuality very well on the big screen.  As for the rationale behind bringing Selina Kyle into the Nolanverse...well, that's a mixed bag.  The minute that Heath Ledger died back in 2008, everyone knew that Nolan was in trouble.  The Dark Knight was pretty much guaranteed critical and commercial success and that Warner Bros. would be clamouring for a final film to round out Nolan's two already-acclaimed Batman films into a trilogy.  The obstacle, of course, was coming up with a story big enough to follow-up Ledger's Oscar-winning portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight.  It was announced Thursday that Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy would be the villains, playing Catwoman and Bane in the final film respectively.  When I heard that, my mind immediately raced back to the kitschy nipple-fest that was Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin -- the one and only time that anyone was dumb enough to put Bane in a live-action setting.  That was a travesty, and I hope that Nolan can pull Rises despite the extreme threat of failure.  Catwoman could bring an interesting new dynamic to the film, depending on how Nolan utilizes the character.  The trend in the last decade or so has been to have Catwoman act as a sort of vigilante anti-hero rather than a flat-out villain.  In many titles she is Batman's lover, and the television series Birds of Prey centers around their daughter.  Catwoman as a potential love-interest for Batman would be a good route, I think, especially since the latest rumor mills have Vicki Vale -- an early love interest for Bruce Wayne in the comics -- being introduced into the Nolanverse.

I have faith in him, though.  Batman Begins and The Dark Knight revitalized a franchise suffocating on the fallout of Schumacher's Dadaist Batman clusterfucks.  The realistic world that he had invented for the Caped Crusader, so much like the comics, is a perfect place for Selina Kyle but not, I fear, for the Toxin Titan Bane.