Matt Reeves' upcoming DC movie The Batman is taking a big risk by having too many villains in play, one that backfired in the 1990s films. The amount of villains to put in a superhero movie can be a delicate balancing act. Some directors, such as Christopher Nolan with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, managed to make movies with multiple villains work splendidly, with none feeling out of place in the overall story being told. Other directors, such as Christopher Nolan with The Dark Knight Rises, let the amount of villains get overstuffed and out of control.
A number of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have succeeded in balancing multiple antagonists, although they often allow only one to act as the featured bad guy, avoiding the problem of trying to give multiple big bads the same level of spotlight. That's a lesson Spider-Man 3 infamously could've learned, failing to adequately accommodate The Sandman, Venom, and Harry Osborn's new Green Goblin within the same script.
Since the too many villains problem has affected prior Batman movies - even the 1966 film starring Adam West, which only isn't hampered too much by having four villains thanks to it being a wacky comedy - many fans are rightly concerned that The Batman is biting off more than it should try to chew by including four. No doubt, it's a risky move to make.
Superhero Movies Have Struggled With Too Many Characters & Villains
For Batman 1989, director Tim Burton smartly chose to offer a sole villain, or at least only one of importance: Batman's arch-nemesis The Joker. While many fans do enjoy Batman Returns, it already began to expose the flaws of a movie featuring multiple supervillains. There was pure villain The Penguin, villain/love interest Catwoman, and sub-villain Max Schreck. Having Shreck there especially feels unnecessary, but he's only really present to try and tie Penguin and Catwoman's story together in some kind of logical way, which isn't really succeeded at. Danny DeVito is fun as Penguin and Michelle Pfieffer is great as Catwoman, but the two together just feels odd.
Once Burton exited and the late Joel Schumacher took over, the multiple villains problem just got worse. In Batman Forever, the characters of The Riddler and Two-Face mix like oil and water, with Jim Carrey chewing the scenery like it was a buffet and Tommy Lee Jones just seeming unsure if he should fire his agent. The two teaming up is barely even explained, it's basically just Riddler saying "hey, let's team up against Batman," and then they do.
With Batman and Robin, the problem was exacerbated further by featuring three major comic villains in Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Bane. Freeze and Ivy again have no chemistry, and Bane is utterly destroyed, turned from genius bruiser into mindless muscle. Clearly, the creative pitfalls involved with putting too many villains in a superhero movie are many, and one wonders why writers and directors seem so intent on doing it so often.
The Batman Risks Having Too Many Villains In The First Movie
Barring any possible villains The Batman might have that haven't been revealed in advance, the film is set to contain four different notable enemies for Batman to tangle with. Paul Dano is set to play The Riddler, who this time out isn't going by the usual Edward Nygma, but instead Edward Nashton. Colin Farrell will portray The Penguin, aka Oswald Cobblepot. Zoe Kravitz will play Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle, after voicing the character in The Lego Batman Movie. It's unclear just how antagonistic her relationship with Batman will be in this telling. Finally, distinguished character actor John Turturro is playing Carmine Falcone, leader of Gotham City's organized crime underworld.
As alluded to previously, two villains can already be enough to negatively effect a superhero movie, and the few attempts at three have rarely worked out well. Trying to incorporate four different well-known DC villains into The Batman is just asking for story and pacing issues, and it's almost impossible to imagine one or more of them not getting the short shrift creatively. Especially if The Batman chooses to try and tell each villain's origin story, which at this point no one really needs, as most people going to see a Batman movie are probably familiar with all four characters enough to not need their hand held.
The only real way The Batman's script would probably hope to be able to balance including Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman, and Falcone is to have them all already be in their established personas, and for Batman to have tangled with them before. Which leads into one possible way having this many villains could work.
How The Batman's Multiple Villains Story Can Work
The best, least problematic way to try and incorporate all four major villains into The Batman's story is to have them team up, and become a proper rogues' gallery for the Caped Crusader. And the team-up shouldn't be some spur of the moment thing either. For such varied villains to want to work together, it needs to be firmly established that they've been villains for a good while, but have been unable to seize power in Gotham City in the manner they would like thanks to the presence of Batman. In fact, why not say that Batman appeared on the scene in response to the actions of such villains, because the city needed a protector.
After having been defeated by Batman in the past, The Riddler, The Penguin, Catwoman, and Carmine Falcone can make a choice to form a true alliance of evil against the Dark Knight. Sure, maybe their egos lead to in-fighting and dissolving the team by the end, but this should be an alliance motivated by real common purpose, that being to bring down Batman. No random "hey let's team up" scene between Riddler and Penguin this time out, please. If The Batman goes this route, the problem of having too many villains could be negated by making their stories fully intertwined into one plot. If not, well, everyone remembers how Batman and Robin turned out.
