Casting Wisdom from the Peanut Gallery

Okay, now that Return of the King is out (I need to see it about a dozen more times in the theaters), it's time to turn my eye towards future movies. Punisher as link looks good, Spider-Man 2 as link is a shoe in for great flick, Episode III . . .eh, well, the FX will look nice.

Christopher Nolan's Batman. Nolan's not going to go the way of Joel Schumacher--that's almost a guarantee. I also doubt he'll let himself get carried away as Burton did in Returns and came close to doing with Batman.

According to a story on Superhero Hype! today, the cast is coming together and they provided a listing.

The cast are
Christian Bale as Batman (I have great hope!)
Michael Caine as Alfred (eh, not to shabby)
Judson Caspian as Viggo Mortensen (oh ho! this could be good! But I figured him for older)
Cillian Murphy as Harvey Dent (no clue about this dude)
Katie Holmes as Rachel Caspian (this makes me very nervous)
Chris Cooper as Gordon (imdb has about a dozen Coopers, so I don't know what I think of this one)
Elle Fanning as Barbara (she's just a kid--as long as she ain't Jake Lloyd, I'm not going to complain)

SHH also stated they were looking for two villains and will have the casting on that done soon. Now, why, why, why are they going with two villains? Learn from history!!
Batman--best of the series--1 villain, played very well, developed very well.
Batman Returns--not bad--1.5 villains (Catwoman didn't really count long term), both pretty well developed, both played very well.
Batman Forever--2 villains, neither played or developed well. Batman & Robin--2.5 villains (Bane was really more of a henchman), half-developed, played like a joke.

What lesson is there in all this? One hero + One bad guy=One good movie. Anything more than that and you don't have the time to deal well with the material. X2 had too many people in the movie and we didn't get as much as we all wanted with all the characters--it hurt the film (granted, still a good movie, but parts felt weak). Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2? One villain. See, they know!