So after seeing the trailer for Iron Man 2 I naturally starting thinking about what a Batman 3 would be.  At the end of Batman Begins, Lt. Gordon starts to talk about escalation:   "We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics.  We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds."  Or perhaps better put by Jim Malone in the Untouchables (aka Sean Connery):  " If he comes at you with a knife, you come at him with a gun.  If he puts one of your men in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue.  That's the Chicago way."  Seeing the Iron Man 2 trailer made me excited for the movie, but also got me to think--hmmmm, that seems like a bunch of dudes (characters) in that movie. 
 
There is a unwritten rule (or perhaps it is a written rule--I don't know, I 'm not a unionized member of the writer's guild) that sequels need to be bigger, larger, with more characters, and more famous actors.  You saw this with the Burton/Schumacher Batmans where the first movie had the Joker (Jack Nicholson), then the second had Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and the Penguin (Danny DeVito), then the third had Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carey) and decided to add Robin (Chris O'Donnell) to the mix.  And finally, who can forget the glory that was Batman and Robin?  We had George Clooney as Batman, O'Donnell as Robin, then adding Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, Arnold as Mr. Freeze , Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, some dude as Bane, and an entire hockey team from hell. 
 
We saw this escalation phenomenon more recently in the Spiderman films where we went from 1 villain in first movie, to 3 in the last.  Now I understand that as we get sequels and thus see established characters develop, and in the case of super-hero movies facing greater challenges, we need to see our characters undergo more hardships to develop.  But does this mean that we need to have more enemies?  Does this mean that we need to cast more famous actors? 
 
I think it would be tempting in the next Batman film to throw more villains at us.  Say the Riddler and Penguin along with Catwoman.  I personally feel that in the universe that Nolan build for his Gotham, having Catwoman wouldn't make sense, and having a bunch of super villains would throw off the believability of the world.  What would be even more jarring would be to have Johnny Depp as the Riddler, DeVito (come on, that's just perfect casting, even 17 years later), and Angelina Jolie as Catwoman (all rumors over the past 2 years) in the movie.  I hope that the 2 villain structure of the past 2 Batman film stays but I know that the studio is probably pushing Nolan to add bigger and more badassed dudes in the film.  Nolan has earned my trust running the Batman franchise--but even he wasn't perfect (Katie Holmes anyone?  And Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn't such a great move either).  In the Dark Knight, would we have had more drama if we had more villains?  Or if more famous actors were involved.  The drama came from the fact that Batman was facing an enemy that wouldn't back down, and same characteristic could come from one villain in the next movie.  Anyway, how would the presence of 3+ enemies make Batman's life worse?  He is already an outcast, a hunted criminal wanted for the murder of Harvey Dent and others.  I am just hoping that the next Batman movie will not be escalated to the point of ridiculousness.