The Dark Knight Rises: Five Spinoff Ideas

Okay, so we’ve come to accept that Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale and company aren’t coming back. It’s hard to cope with, surely, but The Dark Knight Rises is certainly an ending, and it’s greedy to want these things to go on forever just for us. Besides which, eighty years of ongoing, monthly comic books have taught us nothing if not that a lot of the time, it’s better to have a short period of brilliance than to extend it beyond its natural lifespan and end up with something that discredits what came before.So no more Christopher Nolan Batman. That doesn’t necessarily mean, though, that the universe he established, its ground rules and maybe even one or two of the characters can’t be used somewhere else. And of course, we’ve got some ideas as to where…AzraelThe nature of the League of Shadows has always felt a little cult-like, and there’s really no reason we couldn’t get an Azrael out of it. Not unlike what James Tynion IV is doing with Talon over at DC Comics right now, Azrael could easily be someone who followed Ra’s al Ghul, then followed Bane and Talia, and who finally realizes that this group he’s a part of–and probably a key member of–is a little bit on the wrong side of crazy.When he tries to step out, of course, he gets the same level of affection and attention that Bruce Wayne did. These aren’t people to whom you can just give your two weeks’ notice and figure all is well. It would be interesting to see someone who’s fresh out of their system, and who doesn’t have the resources and the toys of Batman, turn on the League and, let’s say, try to scuttle their next big plan before it gets far enough along to really become a big terrorist attack with a big action set piece that attracts the attention of Batman.Jim Gordon could play a role in a film like this, maybe picking up from where Rises left off, with the Gotham sewers acting as a system of escape routes and temporary bases for Bane’s remaining men. That kind of thing doesn’t go away quickly, and the intelligence, resources and arsenal he’s got down there is just begging for someone to find a way to shut it down.