Spoiler alert! The following post contains mild spoilers “The Batman”If you don’t want to be completely cold, then take care.
You can see as soon as you can. Paul Dano’s new Riddler in “The Batman” – masked up and standing eerily still in the shadows before clobbering the mayor of Gotham City in the head with a carpet tucking tool – it’s creepily apparent this isn’t the giggly king of conundrums played on screen in the past by Jim Carrey and Frank Gorshin.
Dano was thrilled about the “risk of a totally new take” on an iconic comic-book villain, the actor says, and “it was a little scary as well, just for like a minute at the outset where you go, ‘Whoa!’ ”
In director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman”The Caped Crusader is now playing in theatersRobert PattinsonThe Riddler appears to be in his second year of fighting crime within Gotham City. This mysterious serial killer is looking for Gotham’s power players and leaves puzzles and cyphers addressed to Batman at every murder scene. He views the Dark Knight as an inspiration.
Review:Robert Pattinson is the Dark Knight in “The Batman” and embodies that broody, brawny Dark Knight.
As Riddler’s real game becomes clearer, he develops a popular following livestreaming his violent antics to Gothamites sick of institutional corruption. Although Batman is the mask-wearing vigilante who does good for the city and others view him as such, some see Riddler as a similar figure.
“A lot of superhero films, the morality in them is very black and white. There’s not often a lot of gray, which I think there is in life, and (the characters are) often protecting the status quo,” Dano explains. In this film, Batman and Riddler are actually challenging that.”
The Riddler’s green jacket – adorned with question marks – is evocative of past iterations, including Gorshin in the 1960s “Batman” TV show and Carrey in 1995’s “Batman Forever.” What’s new is a combat mask paired with glasses, and Dano worked with a “mask guru”To flesh out a character “who probably felt a lot of shame or self-hatred or pain,” Dano says. “The mask allows for you to be either somebody else or to be a different version of yourself.”
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While the mask “became very powerful,” it already wasn’t the easiest to work with when Dano decided to use plastic wrap on his head under the mask to get more into the mind-set of a criminal character concerned about leaving DNA behind (although the audience never gets to see it). “If I wasn’t gonna shave every hair off of my body, I thought, well, let’s make sure there’s no traces of evidence to be found. So I taped off wrists and used Saran Wrap, and that was quite suffocating and painful and hot and head-throbbing. I would not recommend it for any Halloween costume.”
Dano’s sinister side will show when the mask is taken off Riddler is revealed as a man named Edward Nashton, who’s taken into custody at a Gotham diner and interrogated by Batman, and the villain lashes out with spitting fury.
“The hope was that the more real this person was, the scarier that it actually might be,” Dano says.
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The Riddler isn’t the only pop-culture icon he’s played on screen: Dano also starred as Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson in the 2014 musical biopic “Love & Mercy.”
You can be one of the most legendary characters. “the stakes always feel pretty high just because you want to climb the mountain and do your best,” Dano says. “Playing Brian Wilson was one of the best times I’ve had as an actor because the music just gave me so much joy in return. They were both daunting and challenging experiences that now I look at with a lot of fondness.”
Another fun fact is: “The Batman” turned him into a comic-book fan. While indie favorite Dano (“There Will Be Blood,” “Little Miss Sunshine”) hasn’t done a lot of blockbuster movies, “to my surprise it’s pretty fun,”He says. “I’ve really enjoyed the fan element of Batman culture and I think because I also fell in love with the comics so hard studying for this, I feel a small part of that (world).”
Ranked:All the big-screen Batmen (including Robert Pattinson).
