This site gets far less traffic than my other site, Squaremans, but this kind of post is more fanboyish and contains no insight and therefore I felt it more appropriate to my own personal site. Yes, this site exists to build readership for my novel, but it can be other things too!

Rumors are swirling that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is “interested” in the role of The Riddler for Batman 3. I saw Inception twice over the weekend and was impressed twice. JGL is great in it, playing the icy operations specialist, the main character’s right-hand man. He’s not given a lot to do in the movie, but I was left with the strong impression that he could do more. I think he might have been able to pull off the main role there.

I’ve watched fan speculation on a third Batman movie featuring the Riddler and I’m often turned off, alarmed, at how absurd some of the ideas are. So few people seem to understand what makes Nolan’s Batman series successful. If Warner Bros. listened to the fans, this Batman series would more and more resemble the absurdity that the last Batman series plunged into, and which everyone rejected.

But I flatter myself to think that I get it, so let’s imagine that Christopher Nolan went insane and asked me to pitch him a Nolan-directed Batman 3, with the Riddler as the main villain. Here’s how I’d do it.

First, I would never call him The Riddler, I would never put him in a costume, I would never use the completely bullshit name, E Nigma. I don’t see any virtue in calling out who the guy is, or is meant to be, and I feel one of the weak points in Superhero movies is when people act in a manner that only makes sense if they know they’re in a movie. Christian Bale saying “I’m Batman!” in Batman Begins is one such moment. What’s important is the character of the Riddler; what he wants, what he does, and how Batman/Bruce Wayne reacts to him. Everyone in the audience will get it, there’s no need to call it out.

Second, I would accept as a premise that in the next movie, the cops are hunting Batman for the deaths caused by Two Face. I feel very strongly that Aaron Eckhart was the unsung hero of The Dark Knight and if I could find a way to bring him back, give his character some pathos, I would. Note that I would not be doing this because I felt that the sequels need “more villains,” I’d be doing it because I want to see more of that actor in this role and I feel his story isn’t over. So hunting the Batman for the deaths caused by Two-Face in the last movie let’s me kill two birds with one stone.

Because I want to create a tension within the Gotham Police Force. Gordon knows what happened. He knows Batman, he knows Batman didn’t do it, and furthermore knows Batman is a force for good. The city needs him.

But the rest of the cops do not know this. They want to arrest the Batman. There’s pressure on the street, there’s pressure in the media, and the cops want to show they’re the real heroes and Batman is a dangerous lunatic.

The spokesperson for this point of view is, well let’s cast Joseph Gordon-Levitt, why not? He plays a young, hotshot Lieutenant who, were it not for the events in the movie, might well rise to Commissioner in his own time. Gordon, in other words, loves him. Sees him as a younger version of himself.

This is the central tension of the first half of the film. Gordon is protecting the Batman while trying at the same time to lead his men. Tension between him and his men, tension within Gordon himself. Because he sympathizes with them. Not only sympathizes with Gordon-Levitt, sees himself in the younger cop.

Levitt’s Lieutenant is after the Batman, believes Batman is responsible for the deaths caused by Two-Face and is committed to bringing him in. And it should be clear to us, in the audience, that he’s good enough to do it. We may need an establishing action sequence were we see Gordon-Levitt on the job, cracking a very violent and complicated case. If that case feeds back to Batman to close the loop and bring everything together, so much the better.

We need to know three things about this character;

1: He’s highly moral. There’s no drama in his fall if we never believe he was an angel in the first place.

2: He’s tough. He might look young, and whip-thin, but his toughness is not entirely physical, it’s mental. He’s willing to do what has to be done, even it things get rough.

3: He’s smart.

There’s no tension if we don’t believe that Gordon-Levitt could really do it. And I want to make a character who could.

JGL is frustrated because Batman never shows up to thwart any of the bad guys JGL is chasing. Why doesn’t he? Because Gordon is tipping him off. Gordon is actively working to prevent Batman and this hot-shot Lieutenant from meeting and probably it’s frustrating both of those two characters. JGL for obvious reasons, and Batman because he’s taken on the responsibility of protecting Gotham, but Gordon–who has that same responsibility and is one of the few people Batman trusts and who sympathizes with him–is thwarting him when before he aided him. So tension between Gordon and Batman.

Unable to force a direct confrontation through the obvious means of just arresting bad guys until the Batman shows up, and suspecting that someone on the force is feeding information to Batman, JGL decides to bypass whatever covert lines of communication exist between the Batman and the cops, and communicate directly with Batman.

He does this by first going deep into the casefile behind Gordon’s back. Maybe even stealing cases from other cops, more tension. Tension between JGL and his colleagues. He’s deceiving them, even though they’re all after the same thing. He’s taking their cases and leaking information about them directly to the Batman in the hopes that Batman will show up at the scene of a crime, so JGL can arrest him.

JGL opens his direct line of communication with Batman by publishing clues about the cases in the newspaper. In code. Maybe even posing as the Joker. He hopes that Batman will see this, decode the cypher, and arrive at the scene of the crime. Both characters, Batman and JGL, are effectively working to thwart Comissioner Gordon’s attempts to stop them from meeting. JGL deliberately, and Batman coincidentally. Does Batman suspect that the clues are coming from a cop? Maybe.

Note that at this point in the movie, we have plenty of tension and conflict, in spite of the fact that everyone is behaving rationally, and according to a strict moral code. There are no bad guys yet, but we’re rapidly coming to a point where the tensions must resolve, and good people will be forced to do terrible things. This is not only Christopher Nolan’s métier, it’s also the running theme of his Batman series.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s plan works. Batman does find the clues in the newspaper and does decode the cypher. Unfortunately, so do lots of other people. So Batman never shows up because the clues lead members of the press, other criminals, other cops to the scenes of the crimes. Too much action at the scene of the crime for Batman to show himself.

JGL is convinced Batman is reading his messages in the newspaper. A mania is developing, but a shared mania, because Batman is reading the clues. JGL is simultaneously becoming more obsessed, and more right.

If his premise is correct (and we know it is) then the only solution is more complex cyphers, more complex clues. As he ratchets up the abstruseness of his clues, not only do fewer and fewer people decode them, he believes he’s developing a rapport with the Batman. Getting inside his head. Making clues only the Batman could solve means learning how to think like the Batman and in this, it means becoming like the Batman. JGL is going down the rabbit hole, but it’s the exact same rabbit hole Bruce Wayne went down. He’s moving toward an extreme existence, where men do terrible things to preserve what they believe in, but it’s exactly the same extremity Bruce Wayne was pushed to.

Unfortunately, JGL runs out of time. He runs out of cases. Gordon is on to him and without ever saying so publicly, because he cannot reveal either his connection to the Batman or the fact that he’s been protecting him, he starts denying JGL the time and resources he needs to covertly pursue this obsession.

JGL now has no choice. He’s so close to creating the perfect set of clues that only the Batman could decipher. He’s so close to drawing the Batman out, he knows he only needs one more shot.

Consumed by obsession and with no options left, he begins creating the crimes. Now he is really the Riddler. Now he’s become a villain who must be stopped. Innocent lives are in jeopardy, and he put them there.

Probably he starts small. He puts someone in danger, probably an actual criminal. Someone he knows is guilty of a crime, but JGL creates a fake crime and sets up the criminal as the fall guy. He creates a situation wherein the criminal can only be saved if Batman shows up. But Batman does not show up, and the criminal dies. JGL’s hands are now bloodied. This is the point of no return for him. He’s consumed with guilt. He was a good cop and he just killed an (technically) innocent man!

The only solution, the only thing that can relieve this guilt, is following through with his plan. Catching the Batman will justify it all. His set-up was too small-scale, he was too timid in his first attempt to create a crime, too afraid. Too much the Police Lieutenant. But now, armed with consuming guilt, he’s empowered to do something really terrible. Something large-scale. Something that puts the entire city of Gotham at risk. Gotham must be placed in danger because Gotham is Batman’s raison d’etre.

We are watching a good man unraveling before us. I think Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be perfect for that. His obsession with justice turns into just obsession. Everything else a means to an end. Like the Joker, he’s a mirror-image of Batman, but through a different mirror.

At this point, we leave the Riddler behind. We switch perspective to the Batman. JGL has disappeared and Gordon tells Batman everything he knows, what’s been happening. And now Batman must use all his skills, not as a fighter, but as a detective, to stop JGL before he kills again.

So…

Act One: The Lieutenant tries to catch the Batman using legitimate means. Ends with JGL hitting upon the idea of leaking clues about his casefile to Batman. At the end of Act One, we leave one level of obsession, and enter another.

Act Two: The Lieutenant follows through with his plan to communicate directly with the Batman, but is frustrated that the clues are never obscure enough. He runs out of cases, and must create his own crimes. When an innocent man dies, he becomes the Riddler, and we leave another level of obsession, and enter madness.

Act Three: The Batman tries to stop the Riddler.

I feel like this movie can only end with the death of Batman. This series can have no other logical conclusion. He must sacrifice himself to stop the Riddler, and this is something Bruce Wayne realizes must happen because otherwise there will just be more Riddlers. The only way Batman can save Gotham, is to give it up. Give up being Batman. Follow through the idea planted in the second movie that Batman’s only true function can be to inspire. Anything else begets obsession and destruction. Does this mean the death of Bruce Wayne? I leave that question for Christoper Nolan.

The Dark Knight sets an impossibly high bar, but I feel like it’s possible to create a film that stands on its own, while being in the same tradition and following the same themes as the first two movies.

Batman · Batman 3 · Christopher Nolan · Inception · Joseph Gordon-Levitt · The Riddler