We all know that there’s one thing a superhero sequel can’t have enough of: characters! And a scooper to Coming Soon has confirmed a long running rumor about yet another character who appears in The Dark Knight: The Scarecrow. Said scooper claims to have seen Cillian Murphy on the Chicago set of the bat-sequel, where he was spotted leading a gang (a popular social activity for all of Batman’s villains), tussling with the Batman and finally squirting him in the face with his fear gas. This could lend some credence to the rumors that the Scarecrow’s fear chemical is a popular street drug in Gotham City, just the kind of nonsensical junk you hate to find in a movie. Unless the Scarecrow is massively diluting the chemical, why would anybody want to pay money to be scared shitless? It’s like buying acid but making sure it’s only bad acid.
For those keeping count at home, we have the following characters popping up in this film and needing (I’m assuming) a reasonable amount of screen time:
Batman
Alfred
Rachel Dawes
The Joker
Harvey Dent/possibly Two Face
The Scarecrow
Mystery Anthony Michael Hall character (possibly The Riddler, most likely a copycat vigilante)
Good Ol’ Lucius Fox
Salvatore Maroni and his Mafia family
Bank Manager (as essayed by William Fichtner; character a fan favorite from the 1950s Detective Comics, especially the classic story ‘The Many Withdrawls of the Bat-Man!’)
Jason Bard (according to Batman on Film. Bard is another old Detective Comics character, a Gotham PI. In this film he would be investigating the Scarecrow’s fear drug)
I can pinpoint maybe four or five plots in there, and I’m concerned that this film will be suffering from Mid-Trilogyitis, where Nolan and company set up a ton of stuff for the third film and all of those things are unresolved in this movie. On the positive side, middle trilogy films tend to be better when they’re NOT shot back to back with the final film, because the filmmakers are approaching the movie as a movie, not as part one of two.