While Nolan's approach to batman villains has been often touted as being one of the most creative things in the freakin' universe, I'm here today to show you that with a simple formula, most anyone can do what Nolan has done for villains like the Joker, the Scarecrow, and the Two-Face in his previous films. So today, I present to you:
Nick's Handy Guide to the Nolan Method
Step one in creating our dark and gritty character for Batman to fight is of course, to pick a villain. It can be as crazy as villains get to as mundane as villains get, I don't care, just pick one.
Step two, we take the basic premise behind said villain or their most memorable quirk, and match it with the criminal archetype of your choice from any number of crime dramas, crime thrillers, etc. and simply apply the name.
Step three is to create a costume that somewhat resembles the original villain's image, but taken into a "real" context. This basically means stripping the costume to its most basic elements, leaving out capes, spandex, etc.
And finally, give the character a dark and gritty back-story stolen from any number of crime dramas, and you have yourself a Nolan villain! Congratulations! You are now as smart and pretentious and Christopher Nolan!
Now for some examples of the formula at work:
-Poison Ivy-
-Basic Premise: Works with plants and poison. Seductress.
-Closest Crime-Drama Relative: The Sexy Assassin.
-Gritty Costume: Green dress, with maybe some leaf-patterns adorning it. Possibly with a rose in her hair or something.
-Gritty Backstory: After having watched her parents get killed in a drug deal, Ivy dedicated her life to killing the bastard cops who took them. She later became a dealer herself and eventually used her charms to kill the officers via drug overdose. She found that killing turned out to be something she was quite good at, and soon became known as the infamous contract killer, "Poison Ivy", named after her favored method of killing with poison and drug overdoses. That's some dark and gritty stuff right there!
Bam! Nolanized!
-Clay-Face-
-Basic Premise: Pissed off horror-movie actor, Murders people in horror movie fashion.
-Closest Crime-Drama Relative: Any number of bat-shit crazy murdering psychos.
-Gritty Costume: The mask from his horror movie, "The Terror" and some grimy old Jason clothes.
-Gritty Backstory: Basil Karlo grew up in the higher class part of Gotham with his freakin' rich actor parents. His parents pushed him into acting despite his wants to become a surgeon. After starring as the monster "Clayface" in the horror movie "The Terror", Basil finally snaps out of his freaking mind and decides if he can't be a surgeon, he'll just show his parents how good of an actor he really is and murder the whole freaking crew just like the monster did in his movie.
Bam! Nolanized!
-Dr. No-Face-
-Basic Premise: Has no face. Is a doctor.
-Closest Crime-Drama Relative: Ummm... Mason Verger from the movie "Hannibal"? This guy. ---->
-Gritty Costume: This guy. Again. And maybe some ragged bloody surgeon clothes for good measure.
-Gritty Backstory: Bart Magan is one of Gotham City's finest plastic surgeons. But when his face is horribly scarred in an accident, he tries in vain to perform the surgeory on himself, and winds up having practically no face at all. This causes him to go mad, and soon enough he finds himself terrorizing his past patients by sneaking into their homes at night to treat them to the same face he gave himself. Behold the terror of No-Face!
Bam! Nolanized!
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