The Man of Steel and The Dark Knight Rises are going toe-to-toe trying to top each other with casting announcements. First, it was confirmed that Anne Hathaway would play Selina Kyle/Catwoman and that Tom Hardy will play Bane in the upcoming Batman flick. Then, Man of Steel came right back announcing its lead, and now, according to Deadline, The Dark Knight Rises is adding Joseph Gordon-Levitt to its cast list in an unknown role.
The fanboy forums were ablaze last summer/fall with rumors that Gordon-Levitt would play the villain in the new film, but then dropped off the radar after Tom Hardy was announced. Now, he is back in talks, but it is unclear as to who he will play. My guess, is that if they haven’t announced a second villain yet, they probably won’t have one. It would seem to be overkill to have three villains and I don’t think Chris Nolan would want to go down that path right now.
If that wasn’t enough to get you even more excited about this film, how about this quote from Wally Pfister, Nolan’s cinematographer on all of his films since 2000, when he was asked about how this script could top The Dark Knight:
“I asked the same question. I read the script two weeks ago, and he’s done it. Plain and simple — he’s done it. It’s a phenomenal script. He’s still in the process of cutting it back because it’s a very long script right now, but it’s really phenomenal. And he actually had me go back and wanted me to watch, in IMAX, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight again. When I watched those I had read the script for The Dark Knight Rises and was like, ‘dude, it is a perfect trilogy.’ I think that was his intent, to work off those two pictures — and they are very different pictures. And it’s funny, we all had different opinions about which picture we like better.”
Next year is definitely lining up to be a stellar year for comic book cinema. Do you think Nolan can top both of his previous installments in the franchise?
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I seriously doubt JGL will be another villain in the mix. Though Nolan has explicitly stated there will be no Robin in his films, I could easily see Joseph Gordon-Levitt being introduced as Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing) or Jean-Paul Valley (Azrael), especially considering how closely it appears this film will follow the “Knightfall” story from the comics.