Here we are. One of the biggest, and my favorite batman villain. The Riddler. I love him cause in every way shape and form he is batmans equal when it comes to brain power (With the exception of bane and the joker) i like his attitude of superiority and i would love to see him in a darker batman movie, not the crap we got in batman forever. I mean i like batman forever, and i even like Jim carrey, but what we got in that movie was not riddler, it was ace ventura in a onesie. I got to thinking, how would i use him in a movie? What actor would i get to play him? Well then lets dive in, ill save the actor for the end, cause its more fun that way. I do warn you what ive thought up would be a big change from the source material, but hey im trying to have some fun here
Now to get started on his backstory and how he would be used in this movie, this darker gritter batman, but maybe not to the degree of the dark knight.In the beginning my Edward nigma would not be some crazy scientist or stalker of bruce wayne. In fact in the begining he wouldn't care one way or the or the other about bruce wayne or batman. Well to an extent, i would make him a detective with the GPD.
Making him a dective would give him a legitimate reason for being as smart as he is, he's the top of the force, top of his game, he always is getting the big crimes solved, he's even in line to be commissioner after Gordon retires. He does of course have flaws though, he doesn't get out much, he's always focused on his work, always studying, trying to know more and more about everything. Of course there are his personality problems. He's arrogant, self absorbed, and doesn't try to get close to anyone the only exception being his current wife, he thinks he is alone in the world even though the entire GPD love him. When he was a child just like bruce wayne his parents were shot in an alley way, right in front of him putting him on the path to becoming a detective and determined to find the person who killed his parents. However it also didn't leave him right in the head. One more tradgety in his life and he goes off the deep end. He works with batman at times, who also respects him as he knows what happened when he was a child.
One night in the movie during a random crime on a holiday (im thinking christmas but im not sure) Edward gets a call that they found a body. He follows the crime scene and there she is, his wife, mangled up all messed up and everything. He looks closely at the body and sees a date cut to her neck. They all realize calender man was the one behind her death. He of course does not take it well. He finally snaps and quits the force. Since he learned so much over the years he decides to use his skills to take out the people he feels aren't worth life. Including people more intelligent less intelligent then him. He would capture his victims and put them in traps similar to how you would see them in saw.
His traps wouldn't resort to the kind of blood and gore in the saw movies, He would always be monitoring them, watching there every move, telling them they have to use there intelligence to get out of his toys. He would only give them hints on how to get out of the trap if they solved a riddle, and these would not be easy riddles. These would be riddles you need a Phd to figure out. So needless to say the traps would be near impossible to escape. After a while batman would find wind of this and try to stop the riddler. The riddler would design a room to go against batman, seeing him as the ultimate challenge of his skills. And the majority of the movie would be bats attempting to maneuver through this giant maze, trying to save as many people as he can. But failing at times, showing how intelligent Nigma is. It would be an interesting parallel to see exactly what if the same thing that happened to batman, happened to somebody who didn't have the strength he did to do the right thing?
Now onto the actor i would choose to play our big bad guy. Some people have chosen Johnny Deep, Neil Patrick Harris, Phillip Seymour Hoffman. All good choices don't get me wrong,in fact, if Riddler did appear in a film, i wouldn't mind seeing any of them play him. Especially Neil Patrick Harris, i love him. But when i think of my version of the riddler in a film and what actor should play him, only one actor comes to mind. Michael C. Hall.
Now i know what you people are thinking, He just finished playing Dexter, he is not gonna want to go back to playing a serial killer the way you described the riddler. Maybe not, but a man can dream right?
I see Micheal C. Hall in the role for several reasons, the guy is a phenomenal actor. One of my favorites, and im not just talking about Dexter, im talking about six feet under, gamer, even paycheck. He has an amazing range and he could do everything he did and more with Edward Nigma.
As Dexter he had this creepiness but likability to him, which fits for a lot of villains, and for how ive described him here? We are gonna need a lot of it. I feel like Micheal C Hall can have that feeling of he is Batmans equal, he can take him on if he wanted to but he enjoys doing what he is doing. He wants to cleanse the world of criminals just like batman does, but he feels that nobody is a good person on the inside. However he gives them a fair chance to escape. Micheal C hall fits that description perfectly with Dexter alone. He even has the perfect build for it, he can be buff enough to take on batman in a fight if he would need too. But of Course he wouldn't. Plus his voice would really help those scenes we would see of him trying to tell the riddles and help the people out of these traps he has put them through, feeling he is now doing what he has wanted to do his whole life. Micheal C hall could also play the arrogant cop really well. If you have seen Gamer (i wouldn't fault you for it, its not a very good movie) he played the arrogant self absorbed character well. He always was in control which is exactly what riddler needs to be, in the shadows and in control. Of course MCH doesn't need to do the Texan accent.
The thing that brought me to this mind set was this video which i would recommend watching, maybe it will bring you to my point of view
And now we come to one final thing, the costume. Now we can't have the embarrassment we had in batman forever, what Jim Carrey had was not threatening in the slightest.
No, we would need something more scary, yet true to the comic, something that would make you think riddler, but also give people a chill in there spine. For me i would probably go with the outfit he had in arkham city, minus the glasses of course.
I felt it had the right amount of creepy but comic booky as well, which if they are going for that now in the Dccu, it would definitely work for a movie like that. Imagine Micheal C Hall in an outfit like this giving his trademark smirk. God it would give me the willies.
I know this article might have gone on a little long, but thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts on my thoughts, leave a comment. I'm just glad to be back on the site, and hope to make more articles in the future.