Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in Dark Knight Rises.
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Fortunately, The Dark Knight Rises' interpretation of Catwoman is far more understated. Nolan was initially reluctant to include her in the movie, but his brother and co-screenwriter Jonathan persuaded him otherwise. Catwoman is "a very fanciful figure, and our telling of the Batman story has tried to be more down to earth," Nolan says. "It wasn't until I started thinking about her as Selina Kyle that I started to see a way that the character could work in our universe. She's a con woman, she's a grifter--she's got that edge to her."
The force of Hathaway's performance comes from how she conceals Selina's edge. "So many of her choices revolve around not showing anyone any real emotion. She's all about masks," Hathaway says. The actress worked with a choreographer to develop Selina's walk, with its hint of a feline sashay; once she got that, Hathaway says, the rest of the character fell into place. "I wanted her to have a kind of voice where you couldn't quite make out what she was saying. You have to lean in. It's a subtle way of her taking the power while making you think that you have it."
That sense of control by misdirection defines this version of Catwoman. The outfit Hathaway wears in Selina's action scenes in The Dark Knight Rises--a stretchy black full-body suit, in a textured fabric--was designed for functionality first, and it makes her look more like Irma Vep than ever (as well as this season's other black-clad, emotionally masked super-antiheroine, Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow in The Avengers). Hathaway's getup also alludes to some of the character's earlier incarnations: Selina's goggles, for instance, echo the shape of the domino mask that Newmar and Kitt wore as Catwoman. "We were only referencing the earlier suits as much as they were skintight, and they were more athletic rather than sexual," says costume designer Lindy Hemming. "I think that's the most important thing, that it should never look like a sex garment."
The distinctly nonathletic holdover from Pfeiffer's costume is the pair of stiletto boots Hathaway wears. (In some shots, anyway. Hemming notes with some understatement, "You couldn't really wear them every day.") They're part of Selina's arsenal. "The heels are literally blades," Nolan says. "It's taking the high heel, which is obviously an extremely sexy image and something that's very feminine, and using it as a weapon."
In the world of Nolan's Batman movies, you use whatever weapons you've got. Selina's only financial resources are the ones she's stolen, while Batman is "a guy whose one superpower is enormous wealth," Nolan says. The contrast underscores the film's most prominent theme, which is class resentment: The Dark Knight Rises proposes that the downtrodden are entitled to make their own moral codes if the rich are entitled to buy theirs. This is a movie prescient enough to set its central clash on Wall Street and stage a forcible occupation of the stock exchange.