Supermen Seeking Women

More estrogen for the next "Batman" movie, and you can (maybe) soon add another good actor to your list of arguments as to why I should be pretending the "Spider-Man" reboot is a good idea. Details after the jump...



First-up,: Actress, singer and living trope Zooey Deschanel is apparently playing Betty Brant (J. Jonah Jameson's secretary, played by Elizabeth Banks in the previous 3) in "Spiderlight" -  at least so-sez not-terribly-reliable gossip site "Showbiz Spy." Deschanel had the title role in director Marc Webb's prior film, "500 Days of Summer." File the casting under plausible but not terribly likely; but if any of this is true to fact that Betty Brant is A.) in the film at all and B.) has an important role with "big plans" is the real story. In the comics, Brant was the first (short-lived) love-interest for Peter Parker, so if this pans out maybe now we know who's "Jacob" now that Mary-Jane is off the table. Also, her eventual boyfriend turned out to be Hobgoblin, which would be an elegant (if predictable) way for them to do the Green Goblin again without actually doing it again.

Analysis is... egh, why am I bothering at this point? Yes, she's a good actress, yes it'd be good casting. Y'know who else was good casting? Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy... and then the movie came out. At this point, yeah, it's clear that they're assembling a cast of good actors for this thing - albeit in not terribly surprising/interesting ways (Sally Field as an advice-giving matriarch? Gee, that's outside the box...) - but that really does very little to dispell how moronic the notion of the reboot is in the first place, how bad the "new" angle is (Spider-Man: The Degrassi Years) and how unlikely it is that a cheap quickie rights-holding production is ever going to be any good. Yes, it could work out. Yes, it'll get a fair shake. Am I holding my breath? No. Sometimes you really can, in fact, see a disaster coming a mile away - I didn't need to see or hear a single thing about "Transformers" other than the godawful mecha-designs and Michael Bay to be pretty damn sure that it was going to be just as bad as it turned out to be.

Meanwhile, back at Stately Wayne Manor...

Deadline sez that Christopher Nolan is casting TWO major female roles for "The Dark Rises" - one a love-interest, the other a nemesis. Whether or not they're being "cute" and the roles are actually one and the same is left unsaid. Shockingly "the list" of candidates looks an awful lot like the "the list" of candidates for every other major female role in existance right now: Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Blake Lively, Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway and Keira Knightley.

So... female bad guy and a new romantic interest. Obviously, everyone's first thought is "Catwoman" and... fine, whatever. It make sense, it's kind of a "must do," they'd all be varying degrees of hot in The Outfit and everyone but Lively is a good actress. If not.. who knows? Harley Quinn? Probably not. Poison Ivy? Maybe, but unlikely to be very interesting in Nolan's fantasy-free Gotham. Entirely new character? Wouldn't that be something...

There's also the dark horse candidate: Talia al Ghul, daughter of Ras al Ghul - the Big Bad from "Batman Begins." That'd be the one I'd most like to see, from a story perspective: TDK was great, but it's also about as far into "regular crime drama guest-starring Batman" as I'd prefer to go for awhile, and I'd enthusiastically support the series veering back into Batman Vs. Quasi-Magical Ninjas territory. On the other hand, it'd be FASCINATING to see how the Nolan Bros. handle Catwoman, a character based 100% on sexuality - the subject that thus far gets the least attention in their ouvre (nevermind the fact that having a multitude of stronge female characters would be new territory for them in general - let's face it, thus far The Nolanverse is a serious sausagefest.)