I love Batman Begins, it is an intelligent comic book movie but compared to the richness and sophistication of The Dark Knight, watching it now would be like watching The Fantastic Four.

I also agree that Nolan may have a dug a big great hole for himself. The advantage of the Joker (and what is so brillantly depicted in this film - it rivals The Killing Joke)over the rest of Batman’s rogues’ gallery is that he is more than a villain with just some quirks, e.g. telling riddles before each committing each crime - he is a fully fleshed character. It is also difficult to see how a character like the Penguin could bring a darkness to a movie like the Joker does. For the third film I could imagine Bane working well. Although not a particularly interesting villain, he would take Batman/Bruce Wayne in an interesting direction and thematically I think he would work well. All of Batman’s previous tests have been mental. He has fallen, but he has picked himself up again. But can he pick himself up,if he cannot walk?

I think Harley Quinn would be a great villain in this new franchise, and I would love to see what Nolan would do with The Ventriloquist/Scarface (my favourite Batman villain) but someone like Talia Al Ghul is much more likely. And yeah, the Riddler is very, very likely.

Mind you, I still say that you could have great fun taking the entire Batman storyline and then adding to it - for example, a Batman version of Spiderman’s Venom (only done much, much, much better, natch) - but the entire “evil twin” thing could sit well with the obvious current Wayne/Batman schizoid psychosis anyway. And it’s far from outside Bale’s acting abilities to play two characters that you don’t even realise are related (cf. The Prestige)