Anne Hathaway Will Probably Make a Surprisingly Good Catwoman
Hold on. Just hold on. Just, can I speak? Please. Can I speak for one minute. I’ll let you go on and on in the comments. Just give me a minute here. C’mon. C’mon.
Back when I was a kid people were upset about Michelle Pfeiffer being cast as Catwoman. Who knows how we expressed that displeasure back then. We had like 40 channels and no internet and just played Dungeons and Dragons in basements. Somehow word got spread from basement to basement as 12-to-16-year-olds expressed their bewilderment at the casting of Catwoman. Michelle Pfeiffer? Sean Young had publicly campaigned for the role. And she was sexy and crazy. Shouldn’t that have given her a leg up on Pfeiffer, who was just sexy and not at all crazy? And then photos of Michelle Pfeiffer in the tight torn Hefty bag of a Catwoman costume appeared somewhere — fanboy magazines? At the end of newscasts? Who remembers, somewhere. And everyone’s like, OK, I would go see that.
And no one complained about Michelle Pfeiffer ever again. It’s not like Catwoman is anyone’s favorite Batman character. Or that her role in the film is really ever all that complicated. Catwoman’s main characteristics are kicking a little ass, flirting with Batman a little, looking smoking hot in some kind of leather thing with a tail, and purring a lot. It’s not exactly Helen Keller. And I’m confident that Anne Hathaway can in fact purr and meow and maybe scratch Batman’s face sufficiently to give all the fanboys the half-a-chub their $12 entitles them to. Hathaway can sing, she can dance, she dates criminals. She’s naked in every frame of that movie with Jake Gyllenhaal I’ve never seen and won’t see — and not because of her but because of him, I just don’t want to like him any more than I already do, it’s already taken up too much of my life. If they can edit him out of that movie entirely as some kind of DVD extra, maybe have that movie be two naked Anne Hathaways and Gyllenhaal-less, then I would definitely see it.
It’s a Batman movie. Not something important like a Hobbit movie. Are you really going to be lined up around the block for weeks to see a Batman movie? Lying on 34th Street in a sleeping bag while your friend takes a dump in a Ziplock bag in an alley? I don’t think so. You’ll see it when you see it. You only got excited about the last Batman movie because of the Joker, and the actor playing the Joker being dead. That won’t happen this time, I guarantee that.
Fans rarely complain about the casting of men in Batman movies. That blond Two-Face guy the last time? I think he’s working security shifts at Walmart now. There was some problem with Katie Holmes as some Batman ex I’d never heard of, but then she was gone in the second one and it was Maggie Gyllenhaal. In my world it’s Maggie Gyllenhaal who plays Batman. Painted entirely blue with just a little gold Bat medallion glued to her sternum. But I digress. The women of Batman movies are not the problem, the belief that Batman movies should be more than just Batman movies is the problem.
The other Batman villain in this third Nolan Batman is Bane. A ‘roided-out angry dude. Who breaks Batman’s back. Well who do you want to take care of Batman during his five-minute broken back montage? Rumors were first that Philip Seymour Hoffman was going to play The Penguin in this one. The Penguin sucks. Burgess Meredith’s Penguin was awesome, but all other Penguins suck. Penguins themselves smell really bad, like herring poo. Do you want to see Philip Seymour Hoffman give Christian Bale a sponge bath? No one does. No one! But Anne Hathaway has a certain outward innocence which you can tell is pushed out by the deep evil of her soul. She is too nice, too perfect. Just like one of those ladies you work with who you know goes home at night and pours herself a little white wine and stops pretending to be nice and builds bombs in her apartment, like a deranged Martha Stewart Bin Laden. The wispy flames we see in those placid, endearing eyes are where she and her mom buried the other cheerleaders, that’s what they are.
Can Anne Hathaway be sexy? Yess. Can she be taught how to fight. Sure. Can they squeeze her into some kind of kitty cat bondage thing? They have millions of dollars to make this movie, yes and yes. So relax.
Batman movies are meant to be enjoyed, not bemoaned. Sure, all your friends have taken to twitter to crush this Hathaway hag, but you don’t have to join in. Batman movies have to do very little to do the best things that Batman movies do. Blow things up, be dark and moody all over the place, surprise you with laughs. I say give Anne Hathaway some kind of plush Furry look, let her meow every other word and damn if you all won’t be going to Twitter to tell your friends they were all wrong about Anne Hathaway. In a few months you will be ashamed of yourselves that you ever had an opinion about Anne Hathaway. She’ll come out during the Oscars in some kind of tarted-up Catwoman outfit and James Franco will be like, “uh, Anne, am I high or is that a Catwoman outfit?” And Anne will be like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about James, meow.” And the joke will be on all you bitches for having bitchy opinions about who should be in Batman movies. The Republicans are taking over and all you’re worried about is casting for movies that won’t even be out until the world is in flames.
You don’t own Catwoman. Catwoman is for the people. Viva Anne Hathaway. She wanted this part and killed a few young actresses to get it. No one has seen Rachel Weisz in a while. At all. I would have gone for like a Latino Catwoman, La Chica Gata or something. But I’m sure Anne Hathaway will cover all the important Catwoman bases. I want her to live entirely as a cat for at least a year, licking her hands like paws and sleeping for 18 hours a day. Really immerse herself in the role. I am totally willing to catsit that whole thing, I will clear my schedule. Schedule cleared. Meow to us all.
Jim Behrle (rhymes with “girlie”) is not proud of anything he’s ever done and doesn’t want you to know anything else more about him.
Fan-made photo via EpicPonyz