VI. | The Riddler Through the Years

Like many people, I watched the new Batman film past week. As someone who had a DC phase in high school, of course, I liked it. Watching The Riddler as the main villain of a Batman film was great. Everyone compares the past versions of certain characters in comic book films, but The Riddler is not one of them most of the time. So, this film actually made me think about how a character may be represented in many different ways. 

When we look at the last three live-action versions of The Riddler, they are very different from each other while being from the same source material. First of all, there is The Riddler in Batman Forever (1995), played by Jim Carrey. This version of the character may be the most similar to the comic book version out of the three. He was cheesy, over the top, and definitely not threatening. In addition, his costume was similar to the comic books. Staying faithful to source material can be great most of the time, but it is probably not when it comes to comic book costumes.

The second version is from the show Gotham (2014-2019), played by Cory Michael Smith, which is also my favorite version of this character. The show itself definitely had many problems, but one of the things it did really well was its presentation of several characters. Gotham's The Riddler had the over-the-top characteristics of Jim Carrey's while also having the creepiness of the latest version of this character from The Batman (2022). I also liked The Riddler in The Batman, but I think Gotham's was a great combination of the versions from Batman Forever and The Batman. While I love to see the serious sides of comic book characters, I think The Riddler is one of the ones that need to be a little bit camp, and Gotham's The Riddler was great at providing this.