Batman has a wide range of rogues, some of them not entirely filmable. The Calender Man is a fairly important character in the comics, but he is such a daft idea, a relic from an older era, that most writers dare not put him in their stories. Even the Arkham games that tend to embrace the weirder side of Batman try to steer clear from the character and leave him in the shadows. However, sometimes there is a third option. To please the fans and get some wider canon into your movies, you can alter the villain to become more cinematic. Below are three Batman villains you saw in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy without ever realising they were there.
3 – VICTOR ZSASZ
Zsasz is a serial killer in Gotham that never really gets too much screen-time, because he is little more than your run-of-the-mill killer. Sure, he is terrifying to us, as he is cold, merciless and addicted to killing his victims, which he sees as freeing them from a mundane life. However, all fear goes out of the window, when you pit him against Batman, who takes on super-humans for a living. It is always a quick fight and to avoid this anti-climax, sometimes it is better off leaving Zsasz out of your Batman stories.
But when Nolan tackled Arkham Asylum in Batman Begins, it was hard to not use the deranged killer. Nolan has a way of introducing these characters without taking up any extra time in the movie. We first see Zsasz in a single frame of exposition, where we learn that Dr. Crane is claiming that Falcone’s thugs are mentally ill, rather than simply criminal. However, as we know from Falcone’s end that Dr. Crane goes one step further, turning into the Scarecrow and actually making them insane. Zsasz is one of those thugs. While it muddies his backstory a lot, it is helpful to have a recognisable face in the final conflict, where the insane prisoners ruin riot in Arkham City.
2 – THE BROKER
The Broker is the last person you’d expect to see in a Batman movie. To get an idea of how stupid, back then he was called the Calculator. He is so stupid that it was a miracle he survived the very first few issues of Batman. He was one of those bad guys that were created to fill a single issue, where the writers would come up with a bizarre villain for the World’s Greatest Detective to figure out. He was so stupid that when someone decided to bring him back, they renamed him the Broker and made him a sub-villain. He is the guy who does the business deals for every mob out there. For example, while we never see him, it isn’t silly to assume he is the guy that does money laundering deals for the Penguin and Falcone behind the scenes.
In fact, when you know this, it becomes very obvious that Mr. Lau in ‘The Dark Knight’ is actually the Broker. He hides the Maroni’s money in Hong Kong to escape jurisdiction for the police. He is clever and the kind of guy you want hold your illegal money, when the police come knocking. He is actually a very important part of the story, because he pretty much gets the wheels of the plot turning, becoming the catalyst for the Joker’s rampage around Gotham. Maybe that is why the Joker burnt the Broker alive. There is only room for one ‘Oker in this town.
1 – DEADSHOT
This one I feel is a bit of a cop-out. Deadshot is an awesome villain, made famous from Arkham City and Origins, and then the Arrow series. He is a sniper that likes making impossible shots, is hilariously arrogant and never misses. Nolan strips away all of these traits to squeeze in another Batman reference as a nameless thug in Bane’s army.
In fact, the only clue that this guy is Deadshot, other than being an assassin, is the one time he actually uses a sniper. Otherwise, all he ever does is enforce Bane’s regime, coming across as more of a lap dog, than a killer mercenary. So, I am disappointed with this one. I also actually quite liked the character before I realised he was Deadshot. He seemed like a good henchman, created for the movie that kind of stood up on his own two feet. However, now he seems like so much of a simple name-drop that I am slightly disheartened with this piece of trivia.