News: "The Dark Knight Rises" Gets Its Villains

     Today, the cat was let out of the bag (sorry for the pun, I couldn't help myself) when the people in charge of the Christopher Nolan Batman series announced that Catwoman and Bane are going to be the villains in the series final chapter. Ann Hathaway is set to play Selina Kyle (Catwoman) and Tom Hardy, who just worked with Nolan on "Inception", is going to play Bane. Now if you read my Top 100 article last week (and if you haven't, click here), you'll know I am a huge fan of the last Nolan Batman film, "The Dark Knight" (it ranked number 25 on my all-time list), so while I am looking forward to the conclusion of the series, I can't help but express some disappointment over the choice of villains. For one, I was hoping Nolan might explore characters from the Batman universe that hadn't already been put to the silver screen in the Tim Burton Batman films. While the Michelle Pfeiffer version of Catwoman in "Batman Returns" was decent, the "character" Bane in the Joel Schumacher directed "Batman and Robin" was hideous. Now while I haven't read any of the Batman comic books, I am assured by people who have that Bane is a much more interesting character than the one portrayed in the terrible excuse for a film that was "Batman and Robin", and I did get a small glimpse of this side of the character Bane in the excellent video game, "Batman: Arkham Asylum" (for any of you that play video games, I highly recommend this fun and well written game). I am also not too hot on the casting of Anne Hathaway, who I am not a fan of in general, but I was surprised at how great a performance Heath Ledger gave as the Joker, so who knows. I guess will just have to wait and trust in Christopher Nolan.