Riddler Sees Himself as a Vigilante Like Batman, Paul Dano Says

The Batman star Paul Dano says that his Riddler took a lot of inspiration from Batman.

During an interview with Fandango, the 37-year-old Batman villain explained how his character’s motives reflect those of Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight.

“The Batman is born of trauma, right?” he said. “Bruce Wayne, losing his parents… and some people are able to take that and use it as fuel, and sometimes that fuel can lead towards something potentially good, and I think sometimes people take that fuel and it takes them.”

But it’s a lot more than that.

Director Matt Reeves recently said that The Batman is almost like a horror, with the Riddler taking inspiration from the real-life Zodiac Killer murders.

That horror, it seems, is based on The Batman’s version of vigilante justice. 

“I guess I was really interested in the mask and the idea that a vigilante in our world… we often can see what we want to see,” said Dano. “And even though to a lot of people The Batman stands for good, I can tell you that the eyes… my character saw him representing exactly what I wanted to, as a great source of inspiration and power.”

Again, it goes back to the duality of trauma – in this case, the Riddler and The Batman it seems are two sides of the same coin.

“There was some awesome grey in the morality of Gotham and in the idea of good and bad,” he added. “It just felt super complex and thrilling and deep and I’m still so excited about it.”

And he’s not the only Batman to take some interesting inspiration. Recently, Colin Farrell revealed that his version of The Penguin is inspired by the Godfather and said that iconic character Fredo was “a bit of a reference”.

“I was totally surprised and blown away by the script,” said Dano. “In this day and age, you have to ask why? Why are we going to reinterpret The Batman? Right from the get-go of Matt’s script he had a really clear point of view of what he was bringing to this film.”

Robert Pattinson stars as The Batman alongside Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Colin Farrell as The Penguin, and Paul Dano as The Riddler.

The Batman is directed by Matt Reeves, based on a screenplay he co-wrote with Peter Craig.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.