The Dark Knight Rises - Page 5

A few more details about who Matthew Modine is playing in The Dark Knight Rises have reportedly emerged.

Showbiz 411 columnist Roger Friedman writes: "Matthew Modine is about to start filming key scenes in the new Batman movie. I'm told that Modine –whose character's name has been reported as Nixon– is playing an appropriate character for his name. 'He's a politician and a key villain,' says a source. This does sound like director Chris Nolan is creating an homage to another Nixon we knew long ago. At least Modine is getting to shoot his scenes in a safe studio in London."

It should be noted that if Modine's character is a politician named Nixon, it wouldn't be the first Gotham City pol to share a name with a well-known real-life one. The viral sites for The Dark Knight chronicled how candidate Harvey Dent defeated Gotham D.A. Roger Garcetti; Gil Garcetti served as Los Angeles' District Attorney from 1992-2000, his terms being marked by his office's failed prosecution of O.J. Simpson for double homicide and then later the LAPD's Rampart CRASH Scandal.

While Chris Nolan and his screenwriter brother Jonathan have certainly cooked up something uniquely theirs for the next film, they've drawn inspiration in the past from established comics lore. There are plenty of crummy politicians in the Batman realm that "Nixon" could be patterned after.

First, there's Mayor Hamilton Hill, a crony of corrupt political boss Rupert Thorne, who appeared in the comics of the '80s. Hill tried to kill cops, attempted to frame Batman by planting false evidence, and canned Jim Gordon as police commissioner. He also appeared on Batman: The Animated Series.

Then there's Mayor Armand Kroll, a hard-liner who (not knowing that Jean-Paul Valley had assumed the mantle of the Batman after Bane had crippled Bruce Wayne in the "Knightfall" storyline) praised Valley/Batman's more vicious treatment of criminals. Kroll, like Hill before him, found a reason to replace Gordon as police commissioner. Kroll later died when Ra's Al Ghul released the Clench virus in Gotham.

The "Prey" storyline -- which at one point was rumored to have been an influence on The Dark Knight Rises -- saw Wilson Klass serving as Gotham's mayor. He clashed with Gordon on a TV talk show debate about Batman before assigning Gordon to lead the task force to bring the Dark Knight down. Other potential comics characters upon whom Nixon could be based include more recent Gotham mayors such as Sebastian Hady and David Hull or councilmen like J. Carroll Corcoran and Arthur Reeves.

If there's one pattern in these corrupt Gotham pols that jumps out it's their firing of Jim Gordon as police commissioner and their dedication to seeing Batman removed (or, in Kroll's case, celebrating the substitute Batman's brutality). While we know Nestor Carbonell will reprise his role from The Dark Knight as Mayor Garcia, it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could find himself out of office (or worse) at some point in the next film.