R'as al Ghul to Intimidate Batman
Patrick Sauriol's Coming Attractions received some additional insider information over the weekend that helps to round out the rumors everyone is hearing about R'as al Ghul being the next villain in Batman:Intimidation Game.
With the announcement this week of Christian Bale playing Batman (full details right here), things are heating up now for Warner Bros. to get the new Bats movie greenlighted and going.
We've heard from a source who likes to be called "The Other Mr. Voorhees" about what sort of secrets the BATMAN production is keeping, and we'd like to share them with you today. Things like who the bad guy is, when this Bat-film takes place in the character's continuity, and why Bale may have won the role over other, older contenders.
"Think of Nolan's film as 'Gothamville,' the Batman version of SMALLVILLE," writes our Mr. Voorhees. "The entire cast is believed to be made up of young people. Warner Brothers looked across town to Culver City (Sony) and realized they needed to go SPIDER-MAN and cast young."
Bale is 29-years-old, the youngest actor to don the cowl and cape in the film series since it began back in 1988.
The majority of David Goyer's script, which no one has seen yet, is believed to take place in London and a desert locale. According to our scooper the film's primary villain is R'as al Ghul, literally the "Demon's Head" in Arabic, an immortal man seeking to save the world by controlling it. If the Joker is the dark opposite of Batman, chaos over order, insanity over reason, R'as al Ghul is the penultimate version of what drove a young Bruce Wayne to become a protector of the innocent. If Batman was born from the deaths of Bruce's parents and his drive to stop needless violence, R'as al Ghul seeks to save the world from destruction, war and obliteration by taking it over.
The villain achieves a kind of immortality by using a device called the Lazarus Pit to rejuvinate his aged body. This way R'as can watch the seeds of his many strategies bear fruit over the coming decades. R'as also admired the Batman and his mission, and in fact sought to make him his heir by marrying his daughter, Talia. He also controls a vast army of killers the world over known as the League of Assassins.
How much of R'as al Ghul's comic book origin story has been brought into Goyer's script remains unknown.
Part of our information is being corroborated by Ain't It Cool News. That site also claims that the film's villain is R'as al Ghul and that part of the film takes place in London.
Nolan's BATMAN is scheduled to begin filming in early 2004.