Eight years after The Dark Night Rises, the Oscar-winner’s mooted return to comic book movies in Thor: Love and Thunder could offer him the chance to play a truly bombastic baddie
It is something of an irony that the role of Batman, while being perhaps the most sought after in comic book movies, requires its vessel to downplay any showy tendencies to capture the enigmatic spirit of DC’s caped crusader. Michael Keaton, not previously known for soft-pedalled subtlety on screen, knew that Jack Nicholson’s Joker would get all the great lines in 1989’s Batman, and Heath Ledger stole the show so completely as the clown prince of Gotham in 2008’s The Dark Knight that some of us wondered privately if Christopher Nolan ought to have renamed the movie.
It is to Christian Bale’s credit that he remains by far the most celebrated Batman despite employing an eloquently taciturn approach to the role: always at the centre of the action, yet never crowding the mise-en-scène. Throughout Nolan’s trilogy of films, Bale seems to slip in and out of the shadows at the optimum moment – always there to drive the narrative but never overpowering the storyline. In many ways, it is a self-sacrificing turn worthy of Batman himself: he is the eternal straight man to a cavalcade of sneering, leering villains who gleefully mop up all available attention.