In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a new Batman movie coming out in a few months. It’s got some famous people in it.
Among those famous people is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays a character named John Blake in the movie. But of course, he can’t actually be some character that Nolan made up just for the movie! Not with that tantalizingly vague character description! He has to be somebody else!
This being the Internet, there are lots of guesses: here are a few of our favorites.
Robin
Our Odds: Infinitesimal
Let’s see here: Nolan has said he’ll never use Robin. Bale has said that if Robin shows up, he’s done. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in his thirties. Yeah, we can rule this one out.
Azrael
Our Odds: 10,000 to 1
This seems to be mostly based on Azrael showing up in “Arkham City”, because, you know, Rocksteady and Christopher Nolan work so closely together on this stuff. Admittedly, secret societies are going to play a fairly heavy role in this movie: at the very least, the League of Assassins is back. Still, we’re not seeing how Azrael would fit into the franchise’s gritty and realistic vibe.
Nightwing
Our Odds: 1000 to 1
All that said, if you saw “Inception”, or his SNL opener, you know Gordon-Levitt is athletic and can beat some ass. Presumably he wasn’t hired just because he’s a talented actor: this is an action movie, and a finale to a trilogy, we’re pretty sure Michael Caine is going to at the very least bust out some “Get Carter” style beatdowns. We think it’s long odds, and we really hope he doesn’t spend all his time pining after a redhead he’s too emotionally immature to just ask out on a damn date (seriously, Nightwing is the Charlie Brown of the DCU), but if Joseph Gordon-Levitt is anybody we’ve met before, it’s probably Nightwing.
Batman
Our Odds: 500 to 1
The most popular theory is that he takes over as Batman once Bruce Wayne gets taken out of the picture, because, let’s face it, you don’t use Bane unless you’re going to break Batman. Then there’s that whole tagline about how “The Legend Ends”.
On the other hand, this also seems to assume Nolan is going to stick closely to the events in “Knightfall”, and we find that assumption to be off. Nolan is happy to draw from the comics for inspiration, but even the first, fairly compromised “Batman Begins” tended to be inspired rather than draw directly from comics, and even the stuff it cribbed was largely thanks to David Goyer, who got a pat on the head and dismissed from the writer’s room for “The Dark Knight”.
It’s a lot more likely Nolan has something else in mind. Like, say…
He’s New and the Description is Vague Because Warner Brothers Wants to Keep The Plot Under Wraps
Our Odds: 5 to 1
The most sensible explanation is also the most likely: he’s integral to the plot, somehow, and Warners doesn’t want to blow everything. Keep in mind that, officially, Warners hasn’t even admitted Marion Cotillard is playing Talia Al Ghul yet, which is the one plot detail the entire Internet figured out months in advance, and we still don’t know how Catwoman fits into the overall plot.
From what we’ve seen, mostly trailers, Bane isn’t goofing around or being subtle; he’s got a convict army, he leads a huge chunk of the GPD into a trap, and he directly assaults what appears to be a courthouse with a freaking tank. Not only that, Gordon is referred to as a “war hero”.
We’re taking a wild guess here and assuming the GPD is going to have a lot of job openings on extremely short notice. So anybody still in the department and with a pulse likely gets promoted fast, and we’re assuming that’s where Blake comes in.
How about you? What do you think Nolan’s got up his sleeve?