All over the world, millions of us booked our seats early, lined up in costumes, stayed up well past the witching hour to be the first ones to see “The Dark Knight.” And for all its awesomeness, its invention and class, there's still one deep, lingering question yet to be answered: Seriously, is that Barbara Gordon in there at the end?
Ok, not all of us our obsessive about these kinds of things as my colleague Larry Carroll is, and to be sure, her appearance (or lack thereof) is a pretty inconsequential background part of the movie, except as it relates to Jim Gordon, her father. But still, nobody would answer the simple question, not Gary Oldman, not Chris Nolan.
“I don't think I'm going to answer that,” the writer/director grinned. Anybody here want to comment?
“Yeah, [it is Barbara],” screenwriter David Goyer told me.
So, that's one mystery solved. Of course, it only opens up a whole host of others. That's because, as anyone familiar with the comics could tell you, Barbara eventually becomes Batgirl. And us fans? We might actually murder someone if Batgirl made it into Nolan's world.
“Please do not bring Batgirl into this,” user Alan wrote in our comments.
“Yeah hope they don't soil this series with goofy sidekicks and corny plots like that,” user David added.
“For sure, they definitely add Batgirl as soon as they're ready to destroy this incarnation of the Batman films,” user Nelson summarized.
Never fear, good denizens of Gotham. Just because we have Barbara, it doesn't mean we have to have Batgirl, Goyer said. “I can't imagine we would see Batgirl in these iterations,” he insisted. “I don't know that we would get to that place where you would see her.”
Is excluding Batgirl a good thing or a bad thing? We want to know what you think! Chime in below.