Let’s face it, we all know that ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is likely to be the end of the Christopher Nolan Batman continuity. He did two good movies and one truly excellent one (I’ll leave it to you to decide which one you think was the excellent one, but hint: It had the Joker in it) and is now moving on to what sounds like a truly fascinating Howard Hughes bio-pic. The reboot will probably hit theaters in about 2016, just in time to tie in with the Justice League movie…or it would, if that didn’t get delayed to 2025 while Warner Brothers tries to hammer out a few details in the script to make it not so much like the mega-hit “Squadron Supreme” movie Marvel did a few years earlier. (Oh, I’m sorry. Is my faith in DC’s movie division showing?)
But if we did get a fourth movie, where would it go from the end of the third? A spoiler tag, for those of you uninterested in speculating just yet…
The way I see it, there are two basic directions it can go. In both movies, Bruce Wayne is retired as Batman. This saves you the trouble of having to try to bring back a clearly-uninterested Christian Bale, and if you’re not bringing back Bale you can probably go ahead without Nolan as well because hey, why wait all that time for a guy who’s not coming back just because he brought an unprecedented and singular creative vision to the films? So let’s assume this is John Blake, Batman. He’s operating out of the Batcave under the Thomas and Martha Wayne Orphanage, of course, but let’s face it…as many people have pointed out, he’s no Bruce Wayne. He hasn’t trained with the League of Shadows, he’s no kung-fu master, and frankly, it’s not like Bruce really wound up in good shape after a decade or so as a crimefighter. One thing Nolan got right: This stuff takes a toll.
So Blake is already looking for his own successor, after only a few years in the role. Fortunately, this is where we finally see the casual brilliance of Bruce Wayne’s last will and testament: He put a handy orphanage right on top of the Batcave! Endless supplies of angry, parentless kids, just waiting to be shaped and molded into the next generation of vigilante justice! It’s a veritable Batman factory!
From here, I see two takes on the idea. The first is the charming, family-friendly version, where a young orphaned boy is sent to a very special orphanage and learns that he’s got a very special destiny. He trains in the martial arts, gets into boarding-school hijinks, all while preparing for his future as the newest Batman. Call it “Batman Academy”, bring back Michael Caine as the heartwarming and charming headmaster Alfred, and rake in those Harry Potter bucks.
The second…a young boy goes to a strange, haunted orphanage. Every night, he is wakened by the shrieking of bats. One by one, the older boys disappear. There’s talk of hidden caves beneath the manor, a cult steeped in shadows…until finally, on his sixteenth birthday, he learns the truth. The Cult of the Batman waits in the darkness beneath the orphanage, brainwashing children to use as soldiers in their vigilante crusade. Can our hero escape to warn the city of the army of brutal, ruthless enforcers that prepares to march on them in the night…or will he become one of them?
…
……or it’s possible I’ve just gone insane.
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I wouldn’t call it madness. I would call it Elseworlds (if DC still ran something like that).
Third possibility: Club Robin. Just as Blake easily used his Orphan Senses to detect that Bruce was Batman, every single kid in the orphanage just as easily detects that their patron/teacher John ‘Robin’ Blake is secretly the Dark Knight. They decide that they want to help out on the streets, using an alias affectionately named after their hero – but instead of one of them being selected, it’s all of them, a different ‘Robin’ every night! How many sidekicks can one Batman handle?
(This option would allow for both humour and the possibility of introducing “Dick Grayson”, “Jason Todd”, “Stephanie Brown”, etc.)
Third possibility: Club Robin
Joker’s final addition to his thesis “Possible Uses of an Iron Pipe,” below “fix sink” and “prop up couch.”
So your idea is to combine Harry Potter with Batman, only without either character or any other element that made the original franchises popular or successful.
I imagine the theater that shows this movie selling popcorn and soda mixed together into a lukewarm mush.
@Mike I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that this was sarcasm to begin with, based on what he said previously.
But as for me, I’m glad it’s done. The geek community as a whole has problems with this idea but I think it’s important to understand that stories that don’t end are fundamentally incomplete, and you need to end them somewhere.
Nolan is also doing Superman, isn’t he?
I’m less sanguine he’ll do as well with it as he did with Batman, but the Howard Hughes biopic is something I’m hella looking forward to.
Also, these ideas, while excellent, would never get green-lit. MAYBE the first one, the family-friendly one. Not the awesome one, though.
The first rule of Robin Club is don’t go after the Joker alone.
“His name was Richard Grayson! His name was Richard Grayson!”
@PaulW: I thought the first rule of Robin Club was that you didn’t talk about Robin Club. And the second rule of Robin Club was that you didn’t talk about Robin Club.
@Mike Smith: Travesty was correct. This is sarcasm. 🙂 Although actually, a “Robin Academy” comic book series based on taking Batman’s penchant for training teen sidekicks would be kind of cool. But no, mostly it was just that I immediately leaped to the concept of “Batman factory” on watching the end of “TDKR” and thought it was funny enough to sustain a post.
Of couse, Batman training a bunch of kids leads to Batman And The Outsiders and… well…
(Individually some of those are fine… and a small group of them as seen in The Brave And The Bold… kinda…)
Could they all become newsboys? Form a kind of Newsboy Legion, if you will?
He hasn’t trained with the League of Shadows, he’s no kung-fu master, and frankly, it’s not like Bruce really wound up in good shape after a decade or so as a crimefighter. One thing Nolan got right: This stuff takes a toll.
That’s true – he HASN’T. What he HAS done is to become a detective – something this Bruce Wayne didn’t impress me with. Yea, he’s a scrapper and will train up to master level, but THIS Batman will be about tracking the clues. And yes, he does have an orphanage of little helpers that would piss off Gordon. But instead of “Baker Street Irregulars” call them “The Batman’s Nightwings” prowling the hidden corners of Gotham.
This does sound more like an episodic television show, though…
My approach to doing a 4th Batman movie would be to have the final scene be Blake return to the cave to find Kal-El waiting for him to ask him to join this group he’s putting together.
@Craig Oxbrow
As someone who liked the original BATO, I have one question for you…
Why do you hate America?
(Seriously, BATO was cracktastic/craptastic fun for a young boy with plenty of time to waste.)
Why do you think Bruce Wayne was a crimefighter for a decade? He spent his years training, but the ending of Batman Begins shows Joker is already starting to be active, and Bruce retires after The Dark Knight. I think he was probably the Batman for less than a year, unless I missed something.
@Murc: Nolan isn’t doing Superman, Zack Snyder is.
@UnSubject Nolan is one of the listed producers from the trailer.
Batman Academy
The thing is, you’d have several Batmen; getting to put on the suit and go out to fight crime is a rotating duty with the non-suited kids doing the necessary support work viz tracking down leads, R&D, maintenance, etc.
Did anyone else think, when Blake entered the cave, “so what?” Without that fat Wayne bank backing him, could he become a Batman or Robin or whatever?
I really liked Nolan’s movies, but I am looking forward to a reboot, or someone else’s spin on Bats. I’d like to see a Batman that can move, that’s agile, that’s not armored up and can’t turn his head. Think less Frank Miller, more Marshall Rogers or Jim Aparo…
He’ll be Ragman and the Crime Alley Irregulars?
It makes Batman sound like kind of a horrible person. Especially considering he just quit being Batman because, even with all his training, the job almost killed him. Isn’t the whole point of the third movie that you don’t have to sacrifice everything, it’s okay to live your own life? And now he’s using orphans as a stable of self-sacrificing warriors? That’s some Sudanese Warlord shit, man.
Personally I would use the idea of new Batman as an opportunity to move closer to the Marvel-style movies with a lighter setting and more comic book-y plots.
I like the last ideal. Might make a great comic but more then likely the next movie will just be a reboot with a new director and new actors playing Batman and company (or should I say Inc)
Something something Terry McGinnis
The thing I love about the ending is that Nolan left it open for another director to step-in and do a Batman movie without Bruce Wayne without the world going ‘huh?’. Most of the people who would go see a Batman movie starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt have seen DKR and would recognize him as the “heir” to Batman. I don’t think there’d be an issue with moviegoers demanding Bruce Wayne be Batman when JGL is somewhat established.
Also, Nolan’s Batman was more ninja than tradition detective as opposed to “Robin” whose detective skills were on full display in DKR. The next trilogy could be about a test of a man’s mind rather than his body or soul.
Batman Reborn or whatever you want to call it could open with “Robin” during his first night out, and quickly realizing he isn’t as skilled a fighter as Bruce. Using the gadgets and database left to him by Bruce, Batman resolves to hide in the shadows less and assist the GPD more (despite his dislike of the PD, he is a former cop) in solving extraordinary crimes.
And, really, who else is there to figure out who the “Riddler Killer” is?
I’d like to see a detective-style Batman. The cartoon series, especially in the early years, wasn’t afraid to dress Bruce Wayne up as a hobo and send him into a slave-labor compound to get enough dirt on the owner that he can shut them all down.
Assuming you wanted to keep Batman gritty and “real”, like Nolan did, it would be nice to see Gordon-Levitt playing “The World’s Greatest Detective” rather than “The Dark Knight”. Levitt, operating as a private eye, uses the Batman persona to get into places that a regular shmoe couldn’t or to intimidate witnesses. I’d watch that.
Am I allowed to be extremely amused that both io9 and Newsarama posted serious versions of this article? They didn’t postulate the army of killer orphans overrunning Gotham or anything, but they did talk about what a sequel would be like with JGL.