CASTING CALL: Karl Urban As Batman


Welcome back to another edition of Casting Call, where we talk about which actors should play who and demand you agree. We took a little bit of a hiatus last week due to my extreme busy-ness but are back in full force this week with a brand new casting choice… Karl Urban as Batman! Batman has for quite some time been portrayed as a very rough, edgy character but the closest we’ve got to that is Christian Bale’s iteration of the character – and if I’m honest he wasn’t like the guy I know from the comics at all. We have yet to see the true Batman on screen, and as the reboot is a few years away yet Warner Bros and their creative team have plenty of time to get the next interpretation of him right.

WHY HIM?

Three of Karl Urban’s mainstream movie roles are the defining reasons for my casting of him. First: Eomer in the latter two instalments in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I haven’t seen those movies nearly as much as I should have, but I know that Urban was fantastic in both and played an extremely rough and edgy leader, a quality that I have often seen in Batman. Second: Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy. I recently watched this movie and realised what gold I had been missing out on, and he was an absolute badass in that who could hold his own against Bourne. Third: Dredd. This didn’t make as much money as it should have which is sad but there was one thing that kept popping into my head while watching that: BATMAN! Urban showed us that he is leading man material and would play a character like Batman fantastically.

Of course, the grim and gritty stuff isn’t all there is to him. How do I know Karl Urban can play Bruce Wayne properly? The truth is, I don’t, which is what stops this from being a perfect casting choice, as I haven’t seen enough of his stuff to be able to tell he would make a great Bruce Wayne. But I can totally envision that he would embody the suave, playboy aspect of him perfectly and would be able to display his constant depression really well.

ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS?

When you’re casting a character like this you need to be careful and make sure he’ll do well on both sides of the character (which is the same for all superheroes). While that isn’t completely true for Karl Urban (which I said above), I can’t imagine he’d screw up Bruce Wayne. Someone like Bradley Cooper would make a BRILLIANT Bruce Wayne, but a crappy Batman. Same can be said for lots of actors, sadly. So no, there aren’t any other suggestions this time.

WANT SOME PROOF?

I’m kidding. That was the only manip I could find, but because if that was my proof you would hate my casting choice immediately here’s a side-by-side below:

That’s all this time folks, but tune in next week for another instalment of Casting Call, and yes that sentence was deliberately lame. What do you think of Karl Urban as Batman? Share your thoughts below.