Female leads for "The Dark Knight Rises"

It's Nolan who wants to stay away from the super powered, supernatural or super science characters. It's Nolan who wants to stay close to realism or at least a reasonably believable facsimile of one.

Yes you could have Poison Ivy as an eco-terrorist with bioweapons derived from nature. Too bad they already sort of played that card with Scarecrow.

Yes they could have a Catwoman, but she really isn't a big heavy, merely a talented thief.

I would have Talia come to Gotham to claim her father's body and take it home to be buried in the family cemetery. While there she and other members of the League of Assassins go after Batman to avenge her father as well as punish Batman for betraying the League. Only Talia falls for Bruce and in the end helps him fight off the League and prevent them from carrying out another plan to destroy Gotham. The movie ends with the two saying their goodbyes as Talia watches the casket containing her father's remains being loaded onto a plane for transport. Comic fans know that she's headed for a Lazarus Pit without the supernatural being introduced into the movie.

Kate Beckinsale for Catwoman! We already know she can pull off the black leather catsuit!

That's because the superhero universes tend to sold of piecemeal to movie studios. The surprising thing is Superman and Batman franchises are WB which own DC. You would think they would embrace the shared universe the way Marvel did with Iron Man, Hulk and their planned Avengers related properties.

But I think WB movie division simply thinks about movies one franchise at a time. The idea that multiple franchises are related is something so foreign to them that they haven't come up with a way to share/hide profits from such a venture.

I think Metropolis was briefly mentioned in Batman Forever, but it's a good point. And I agree, superpowered villains and more fantastical elements can indeed work in comic book movies. It just depends on presentation. With a different script and director, even Arnold and Uma's Freeze and Ivy probably could have worked. I can easily picture Mr. Freeze being portrayed by the cold, unfeeling and inhuman Terminator, or Ivy as a deceptively deadly seductress. The problem is they were portrayed as campy and over-the-top, because that was the vibe the filmmakers decided to go for.

If the movie takes the villains seriously, so will the audience. Same goes for the superscience and magical hoodoo.

I suspect that the Thor and Green Lantern movies are going to be something of a litmus test to see if Hollywood can pull off some of those elements convincingly. If so... who knows? We might actually see Bale as Batman in a Justice League movie down the line.

I think one of the problems has been that until recently the technology just hasn't been there to do good looking special effects for superpowers. Just look at Spider-Man's webs from the 70's live action show for a good example. Then you add in that the budget isn't there to do lots of special effects, especially when it comes to live action TV shows, and its easy to understand why until recently superhero movies and TV shows have tended to focus on characters that are either unpowered or have easy to do superpowers like flight, superstrength, etc. Obviously the SFX technology is starting to reach the necessary level, it just needs to come down in price.

Spider-Man's webs from the 70's TV show look suspiciously like 3/8" nylon rope.

Still I'm of the opinion that if the special effect can be done with practical with a bit of digital touchup Vs total CGI, practical looks better.