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8 Batman Villains That Need Origin Stories Told Instead Of The Joker

It’s not a stretch to say Batman has one of the better rogues galleries out of any colorfully costumed crime fighter. A hero is only as good as his villains, and every one of The Dark Knight’s dastardly foes are complex and three-dimensional in their own twisted way. In fact, a prequel movie about any of them would work for almost all of Batman’s villains… except one.

Poison Ivy

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Audiences have been pushing for stronger female representation in films for years, and Warner Bros. is in a great spot to continue putting female characters front and center in their films after the overwhelming critical and commercial success of Wonder Woman. One villain that deserves a chance to take the spotlight in her supervillain origin movie is none other than Poison Ivy.

Often thought of as either an over-sexualized green-skinned vixen or an extreme eco-terrorist, there’s actually a lot of potential for an origin story revolving around one of Batman’s most famous villains. Before her accident, she was known as Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley, a Gotham city botanist. She’s horribly experimented on by a male colleague and comes out of it a changed woman, meaning she has the ability to control plant growth (which is a lot cooler than it sounds).

A film around her backstory would not only be tragic, but also a little topical. If the movie paints her as a woman who’s desperate to protect the Earth from harmful toxins and manmade problems, then at its core you have a villain who just wants to protect what she thinks is important. That immediately makes a prequel story loads more interesting than whatever they want to do with The Joker.