Riddler Poll #1

Here's the first of many Riddler polls. I decided to make them smaller than the Catwoman polls, because although the field is a little smaller, there are two totally different ways to approach the Riddler. He could be completely manic, like Frank Gorshin and Jim Carrey played him, or a calculated intellectual (and coward) more like how he was portrayed in the animated series from the 1990s or recently in comics. So reducing the field reduces the chance that your favorite manic Riddler actor will be up against your favorite intelligent one. The entire field, with submissions from the comments recently added, is here, and here are the first contestants:

• Michael C. Hall
  You may know him from: Dexter, Six Feet Under
  
  His character on Dexter is a sociopath whose unnerving coldness while doing horrific things has earned him a lot of fans. That kind of thing could completely work for The Riddler.


• Denis Leary
  You may know him from: Stand-up comedy, Rescue Me, The Ref
  
  I forget where I saw it, but jotted his name down even though he's a terrible choice. I like him a lot as an actor, just not for this part at all.


• Daniel Day Lewis
  You may know him from: Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood, My Left Foot, Last of the Mohicans In The Name Of The Father
  
  He is sometimes incredible, but sometimes overacts ridiculously, so much so that it won't even work in a comic book movie. Not that it matters, because I can't imagine him ever wanting to be in a Batman movie anyway.


• David Tennant (pictured)
  You may know him from: Dr. Who, and what looks like a bunch of other UK TV series
  
  I don't watch Dr. Who, so I'm not familiar with his work. He's a pretty popular choice among fans, though, and has expressed interest in the part. But from what I can tell, he almost certainly would go the Gorshin/Carrey route.


• Christopher Walken
  You may know him from: The Dead Zone, Saturday Night Live appearances, Pulp Fiction, too many other roles to list
  
  He's eccentric and can be unnerving when he's not playing it for laughs, but I can't imagine a Riddler who's pushing 70 years old.

The poll should be up within a minute, and will close in a week. Depending on my free time over the holidays, I may get another poll up next week, but it might be longer.

Casting the Riddler

A while back, I did a giant list of possible actresses for Catwoman, and a series of polls eventually leading to you guys picking Julianne Moore for the part. And a recent post on MTV's Spash Page reminded me that I've been meaning to do one for the Riddler for a long time.

So the first step is to hunt down every name I can find associated with the Riddler for a future Batman movie. Please remember that this is not a list of my suggestions, because I happen to think some of these are downright awful. And if there are any names you think should be on the list, let me know in the comments.

Updated the list with updates from the comments (though I trimmed some off of Commissioner Gordon's list at the bottom of this post because the polls would never end with that many actors, and, no offense, Harrison Ford would be awful):

Casey Affleck
Eric Bana
Paul Bettany
Steve Carell
Jim Carrey
Macaulay Culkin
Paul Dano
Willem Dafoe
Matt Damon
Jeremy Davies
Johnny Depp
Michael Emerson
Lee Evans
Michael Fassbender
James Franco
Brendan Fraser
Crispin Glover
Jeff Goldblum
Jake Gyllenhaal
Brian Austin Green
Jackie Earle Haley
Michael C. Hall
Neil Patrick Harris
Hugh Laurie
Jude Law
Denis Leary
Damian Lewis
Daniel Day Lewis
Vincent Kartheiser
Tobey Maguire
James McAvoy
Ewan McGregor
Viggo Mortensen
Eddie Murphy
Edward Norton
Jim Parsons
Guy Pearce
Sean Penn
Lance Reddick
Andy Serkis
Kevin Spacey
David Tennant
Christopher Walken
Elijah Wood

I'll try to put up a poll of the first set in about a week. And again, let me know if you have any other suggestions.

News & Notes

Pirate Batman (above) is among the odd things promised by Grant Morrison in next year's Return of Bruce Wayne, which will return the comic version of Batman from the "dead."

Morgan Freeman has a gut feeling that Christopher Nolan will be back for a third Batman film. And he thinks Catwoman should be involved.

Matt Damon was considered for the role of Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. Scheduling conflicts made it a non-issue before there was any real discussion. It's interesting to think about, but as Damon points out, "Aaron [Eckhart] is a great actor, so the movie didn't suffer for it...."

And to link to MTV's Splash Page (a really good source for comic movie news) three times in a row, Danny De Vito looks back on making Batman Returns.

A robot dinosaur has been stolen from a museum in Mexico. Word on the street is that it was smuggled into some rich guy's basement.

And here's a great advertisement:

News & Notes

DC's Source blog has the details on upcoming original graphic novels that update the origins of Batman and Superman. Comics fans will find this to be familiar, since Marvel did it beginning in 2000 with their Ultimate line, which was a pretty cool idea and resulted in some quality comics for a while.

What's odd, though, is that Batman's origin isn't the least bit dated. Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One hasn't aged at all (with the small exception of Catwoman seeming pretty 80s (she reminds me of Joan Jett)). So I'm not entirely sure what the point of it all is, but the costume doesn't look half bad (though Bleeding Cool thinks it might be a ripoff), and Geoff Johns and Gary Frank is a solid creative team.

Elsewhere, one of the best Batman comic moments in a good while happened a few weeks ago in Detective Comics #859. The Weekly Crisis has some images (scroll about 1/3 of the way down).

And io9 talks about the philosophy of Batman and the Joker in an article that mostly went over my head.