Christopher Nolan has worked so hard to deliver a Batman who exists in a world as close as possible to our own that it was no real surprise when the guileful British film-maker named Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, rather than Catwoman, in The Dark Knight Rises. But if Nolan was hoping to keep Hathaway's true identity under wraps (Kyle becomes Catwoman in the comics) in advance of the final part of his Batman trilogy's release, a new set of paparazzi shots from the set of the film have rather let the … ahem … cat out of the bag.
There's Hathaway, in full light of day, dressed up in a figure-hugging black leather catsuit with visible cat ears. Unless Kyle and Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne are attending a particularly ironic Halloween ball, Hathaway is pure, 100% Catwoman in the scenes being filmed.
Furthermore, Nolan and his costume designers seem to have opted for a pretty orthodox rendering of the character. Hathaway's costume mercifully dispenses with whiskers and a tail (as you might see in famous comic book iterations such as Frank Miller's Batman: Year One) but the actor really couldn't be anyone else. Given the inventive job Nolan's team did with Heath Ledger's Joker and Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow in The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, I'm almost disappointed.
Is this a hint that The Dark Knight Rises might eschew the brooding Michael Mann-style crime thriller influence that infused the two previous films in the series for a return to Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher-style comic book camp? More likely, the famously wily Nolan is simply leading us up the garden path. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until July 2012 to find out.
