Catwoman Is The Best One Yet

             There’s no such thing as the purrrrfect Catwoman. The character’s background, dating back to her origins on television on the 1960s series Batman as well as her appearances in the comics run the gamut from wiley adversary to a whiney ex-lover who calls Bruce Wayne just to say “Bruce, I’m lonley” in Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. There’s not one perfect rendition to aim for. But Anne Hathaway’s complex cat burglar in Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman film The Dark Knight Rises may be the closest thing we’ve seen to a perfect rendition of the infamous and beguiling Selina Kyle.
The first part of her success comes purely from Nolan’s decision to leave off the Catwoman moniker. If anything, we can assume those Gothamites who’d witnessed her work might whisper the name jokingly, but for the entirety of the film, she is solidly Selina Kyle, professional cat burglar and not some acrobatic she-villain in a spray-on leather suit (though her suit of choice is rather curve-hugging).
But it’s not just the costume. Hathaway’s Kyle is not a criminal born out of the usual Catwoman origin. The first film iteration with a significant background is the very memorable performance from Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (before that, fabulous Catwoman portrayers like Eartha Kitt and Julie Newmar were simply perfectly executed bad, bad kitties). Pfeiffer's Kyle is a downtrodden, mousy woman, fed up with the way men and the world stomped all over her. And one night, in the privacy of her sad, cat-filled apartment, she gets angry enough to sew together a patent leather catsuit, get her groove back and strike out at Gotham City with all her pent-up womanly rage. Her assault on the city and her partnering with the Penguin are petty and driven by a sense of selfish injustice. She’d been personally wronged, ignored, mistreated, and as such, everyone else is going to suffer her wrath. (Halle Berry’s Stretch Armstrong of a Catwoman suffered from a similarly unflattering origin story.) Even when she sacrifices herself to kill Shreck (Christopher Walken) at the end of the film, she does so in a way most people would file in the looney bin. Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is entertaining, and even sexy at times, but she is not a woman for modern viewers to relate to. If anything, she’s the depiction of women most modern ladies are trying to quiet. Let's just say there's a reason that as even as a child and major fan of Batman Returns I chose to imitate the caped crusader, gender be damned, and not his confuddled could-be sidekick with the long, pointy nails.

And then there’s her status as Batman/Bruce Wayne’s perfect match. Throughout the history of Batman, Catwoman/Selina Kyle has been a conflicting presence for Bruce. She’s always been on the wrong side of the law, but their attraction has been unavoidable. There’s something about her confusing morals that give him something he can relate to. She’s ultimately coming from a similar place of wanting to make the world better, but she’s unsure how to do that without causing evil. Still, Nolan's Kyle understand the mistakes she's made, something we can surmise by her remorse in one the final scenes in TDKR when she sees the result of helping Bane turn Gotham into a state of anarchy and stares with regret at one family’s shattered portraits. Her struggle is not unlike the moral struggle that Batman has faced time and again, including in Nolan’s The Dark Knight. 

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