Last year, The Batman delivered The Riddler’s first live-action film appearance since Jim Carrey brought the supervillain to life in 1995’s Batman Forever. However, outside of a love of green clothing and their penchant for feeding riddles to law enforcement and the Caped Crusader, these two versions of the character couldn’t have been more different, with Paul Dano’s Riddler being a serial killer targeting Gotham City’s corrupt officials and elite power players. It was certainly one of the more intense performances from the Batman movies canon, and according to writer/director Matt Reeves, one of Riddler’s key scenes was shot over “70 or 80 takes.”
Speaking with The Guardian for a profile about Dano’s career on behalf of his 2023 new movie release Dumb Money, Reeves boasted about how the actor shared his strong commitment to ensuring that a scene unfolded just the right way, describing the man who brought Edward Nashton to life as "indefatigable.” In the filmmaker’s words:
Paul loves doing a lot of takes, as do I. We took two days on the final scene between him and Robert Pattinson as Batman, and we must have easily done 70 or 80 takes. Paul loves exploring. He’s obsessive that way.
The scene Matt Reeves is referring to is when Robert Pattinson’s Batman is interrogating Riddler at Arkham State Hospital, with the villain having been apprehended shortly after he assassinated crime lord Carmine Falcone. This was Batman’s first chance to finally understand what makes this man who’s been theorizing Gotham City for weeks tick, and it turns out that his own vigilante activities are what inspired Edward to kill the people he believed were poisoning Gotham City. By the end of their heated conversation, he learns that Edward has one more trick left up his sleeve: flooding Gotham by blowing up the city’s seawall, then sending his followers to assassinate mayor-elect Bella Reál.
That scene was just one example of how far Paul Dano was willing to go to deliver the best Riddler performance in The Batman. As Matt Reeves continued below, he’d often find himself taken aback, in a good way, by acting choices Dano would make in the spur of the moment:
There were all these moments as the Riddler where he’d be tickled by something and then fly into a rage, and you never knew from take to take where that switch would come. I’d be sitting there with the headphones on, trying to stifle my laughter because he’d always do something surprising. Paul would ask me: ‘Was that crazy? Was that too much?’ I’d say: ‘No it’s fantastic. Let’s do another.’
While Batman couldn’t stop Gotham’s seawall from being destroyed, he was able to save Bella Reál and take down Riddler’s followers with Catwoman’s help. This climactic conflict also made Bruce Wayne realize that he needed to do more than just strike fear into the hearts of criminals; he also needed to inspire hope in the city’s citizens. As for Riddler, while he remains locked up in Arkham, he befriended a fellow inmate in the final minutes of the movie: Barry Keoghan’s Joker, who was more openly shown in a deleted scene. Whether or not we’ll see either of these characters in The Batman: Part II or the Arkham tie-in series remains to be seen.
Revisit Riddler’s reign of terror by streaming The Batman with your Max subscription. That platform is also where Colin Farrell’s The Penguin series will premiere sometime in 2024, and The Batman: Part II is slated on the upcoming DC movies schedule for October 3, 2025.
