The Blonde Ambition

Old superheroes never die; they simply hang up their capes and retreat to the shadows, awaiting the moment when fashions change and they're required again. One minute Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is hobbling around his country pile, leaning on his stick like a latterday Howard Hughes and woefully proclaiming that "there's nothing out there for me". The next he's back in the bat-suit, back in the saddle – recalled to save the world or Warner Bros, whatever comes first.

Preamble complete, the dark knight duly rises for the bruising final stanza in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, a satisfying saga of revolution and redemption that ends the tale on a note of thunder. If viewers were wanting a corrective to the jumpsuit antics of The Avengers, or the noodling high-school angst of The Amazing Spider-Man, then rest assured that Batman delivers in spades. Here is a film of granite, monolithic intensity; a superhero romp so serious that it borders on the comical, like a children's fancy-dress party scripted by Victor Hugo and scored by Wagner.

Still, cometh the hour, cometh the man. Gotham City is facing nuclear catastrophe, with the authorities powerless in the face of a hydra-headed terrorist threat. No sooner has Wayne affixed his bat-ears than he's being bamboozled by a mercurial cat-burglar (Anne Hathaway) and savaged by Bane (Tom Hardy); a fanatical warlord who comes disguised, rather alarmingly, as a monstrous rough-trade gimp. Poor Batman. Bane not only out-punches our hero, he out-rasps him too – delivering his lines in a choked, muddy drawl that makes him sound like Marlon Brando, down a well-shaft, gargling from a jerry-can. Bane might be fomenting a mass uprising against Gotham's moneyed elite; he might be singing the show-tunes from La Cage aux Folles. It is sometimes hard to tell.

Anne Hathaway appeared somewhat still in character when she was spotted out and about in Dolce&Gabbana black classic tube dress in brocade. Hathaway plays the part of Catwoman in the upcoming movie  ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and the star’s cropped boyish hairstyle and simple yet elegant black dress cuts a lithe and subtle figure much like the supervillan she portrays.

Hathaway is known for the purity of her beauty as well as her technical ability as an actor. She has the shape-shifting characteristics of mercury coupled with feminine allure, something she shares with Batman’s foe and long-term love interest. Catwoman is impossible to pin down, she is an anti-hero, yet she neither kills nor is evil. With the agility of the cat she springs from hero to antihero, to love interest to protagonist, to criminal and always lands on her feet.

Speaking about her role as Selina Kyle in Christopher Nolan’s Batman flick she said: “She’s so the embodiment of her time and whatever world she’s in. I’ve seen versions where she’s incredibly glamorous, and I’ve seen versions where she’s a street kid, and that kind of informed my idea is that part of the way she cons people is she seamlessly and effortlessly becomes whatever their idea of who she is, is.”

Catwoman was created by Bob Kane and first appeared in the Batman DC Comics series in Spring 1940. Kane, who was a huge movie fan, cited golden age of Hollywood Austrian-born actress Hedi lamar as well as Jean Harlow as influences in the creation of her character. 

Originally brought in to give the Batman comics more sex appeal and to give the comic more appeal to female readers. Catwoman was invented ‘as a friendly foe who committed crimes but was also a romantic interest in Batman’s rather sterile life’. She was meant to engage the hero in a romantic ‘cat and mouse’ as he tried to reform her.

Kane stated that he and co-creator used cat symbolism as they saw cats as ‘kind of the antithesis of bats’. “I felt that women were feline creatures and men were more like dogs. While dogs are faithful and friendly, cats are cool, detached and unreliable. I felt much warmer with dogs around me – cats are as hard to understand as women are. Men feel more sure of themselves with a male friend than a woman. You always need to keep a woman at arms length. We don’t want anyone taking over our souls and women have a habit of doing that”.

Catwoman has had many onscreen incarnations, the first was Julie Newmar in the TV series in the 60’s. Lee Meriwether played the Catwoman in the 1966 feature film and Eartha Kitt in the series’ final season. Big screen portrayals of course were done by Michele Pfeiffer in ‘Batman Returns’ and ‘Halle Berry’ in the 2004 flop that reinvented the character as Patience Phillips.

Catwoman has had many different character trajectories over the years, both in comics, on TV and in films with her origins and motivations altered constantly and Christopher Nolan is no different in tailoring his characters in order to fit them into his vision of Gotham City. 

Hathaway’s Catwoman retains the figure-hugging cat suit so associated with the feline foe, her weaponry includes infrared goggles, spiked high-heels and an array of lock picks she keeps in her belt. The images released of Hathaway in character show her toting a pistol instead of the traditional whip she has used in the past.

Speaking about getting into that skin tight all-in-one she said: She said: “I decided that it’s probably better for my stress levels to focus on how I felt in the suit and leave the visuals up to Lindy, our costume designer. Whenever I got into the suit I was always on set. There weren’t any mirrors, so occasionally if I went to the bathroom I would catch a glimpse. I got to know the suit one piece at a time”. 

(Just how does one go to the bathroom in a Catwoman suit Anne?)