Jonathan Nolan reveals the original villain considered for The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) had the unenviable task of following what many consider to be the best live action superhero film of all time: The Dark Knight (2008). The film had insurmountable challenges, especially given that the actor who stole the show as the Joker in the previous installment had died.

Christopher Nolan, the trilogy's co-writer/director, was forced to dig into the Batman mythos and adapt another villain to bring his epic story to a close. He ultimately decided to go with Bane, who was magnificently played by Tom Hardy, but Nolan's co-writer/brother Jonathan, revealed that Bane was not the first villain they envisioned.

Jonathan Nolan wanted to utilize the Riddler

Jonathan Nolan appeared on an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast earlier this year, and he confirmed that the Riddler was actually going to be the DC villain that Batman went up against in the final Dark Knight film.

The idea, according to the younger Nolan, was to position the Riddler as a serial killer, as a foe who taunted and outsmarted Batman, but the decision was ultimately made to go the opposite direction. Why? Well, Jonathan and Christopher Nolan felt the Riddler would be too close to the Joker to stand on his own:

"It did feel like it was close enough to the space of what we'd done with Heath that you really needed to ... shift there.
"

Bane definitely proved to be a shift. The character was the first in the trilogy's history to best Batman from a strength perspective, and The Dark Knight Rises does some cool things with the metaphor of a physically and spiritually broken hero.

Leonardo DiCaprio was rumored for the part

Slash Film alleges that Leonardo DiCaprio was touted by Warner Bros. as a possible Riddler, which would make sense given that DiCaprio and Christopher Nolan had just worked together two years prior on Inception (2010).

The thing is, DiCaprio has been adamant about avoiding franchises and superhero films, in particular, throughout his career. Jonathan Nolan did not speak on the DiCaprio rumor, leading us to believe that it never got very close to becoming a reality. All that said, we're pretty happy with the Batman film that we got.

Plus, DC fans got to see the Riddler pop up a decade later in The Batman (2022).