Batman Why Riddler Isnt in The Long Halloween Movies

Batman: Why Riddler Isn’t in The Long Halloween Movies

While the animated Batman: The Long Halloween films faithfully adapt the comic book story, here’s why it chose to omit the Riddler from the movies.

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One of the most celebrated Batman comic book stories of all time is Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween, a 13-issue maxi-series published by DC from 1996 to 1997. To commemorate the story’s 25th anniversary, the comic was adapted into a two-part animated film, directed by Chris Palmer from a screenplay written by Tim Sheridan. And while both installments of The Long Halloween faithfully recreate the year-long murder mystery, as Batman scours Gotham City for a serial killer that strikes on the holidays, there is one key omission from the adaptation: The Riddler.

Edward Nygma stars in a single issue within the comic book The Long Halloween, brought in for his keen intellect as Holiday’s killing spree escalates. Despite this prominent appearance in the comic, the Riddler is conspicuously absent in both installments of the animated comic book adaptation.

What Are The Long Halloween Films About?

In Loeb and Sale’s original comic, the Riddler appears in the series’ April Fools’ Day after being hired by Gotham’s biggest mob boss, Carmine Falcone, to determine the identity of the Holiday Killer. The Riddler’s deductive analysis occurs as Batman is reviewing the evidence in his own investigation of the string of murders in the Batcave, with the two sleuths separately recapping the events of the story so far as they come up with a list of suspects for Holiday’s identity. Though both characters remain in the dark as to Holiday’s true identity, the issue comes to an end with Holiday mockingly attacking the Riddler, sparing the supervillain’s life due to the nature of the April holiday before resuming their killing spree.

The Long Halloween sidesteps this interlude entirely, with the adaptation prolonging the period in which Bruce Wayne was under the mental control of Poison Ivy on behalf of Falcone. There is no extended review of the evidence regarding the Holiday Killer and the Riddler does not appear in either film at all. A big factor of this omission is pacing, The Long Halloween Part 2 moves at a breakneck speed as Holiday claims more victims and the number of supervillains surfacing grows in the face of Falcone’s control over Gotham steadily eroding. Screenwriter Tim Sheridan acknowledged that one of the bigger creative challenges was maintaining the narrative pacing, transitioning a monthly comic to a feature film. This helped inform the decision to split the adaptation into two separate films.

Where Is the Riddler in The Long Halloween Films?

Sheridan revealed that the Riddler did indeed appear in an early draft of The Long Halloween before he and the creative team felt it slowed the momentum and served as a recap for the story that worked for a monthly comic but markedly less so for a feature film adaptation. After excising the sequence, Sheridan instead wrote a script for a Riddler short film that would have adapted his appearance in The Long Halloween to potentially accompany the film, though the planned animated short ultimately went unproduced as both installments of The Long Halloween were released.

Sheridan clarified that the way The Long Halloween was written was in a way that would not preclude the Riddler’s role from taking place — it’s simply not seen in the film itself. With a large cast and story spanning over the course of a year, it’s completely logical that elements of The Long Halloween would be streamlined and omitted from playing out on screen and the Riddler’s role in the overarching mystery simply isn’t all that particularly vital; Holiday still carries out their murders and the Riddler never learned the true identity of the killer in the comic story anyway. As memorable a supervillain as the Riddler is, The Long Halloween really isn’t his story and that’s especially true for the adaptation.

Directed by Chris Palmer, Batman: The Long Halloween Parts 1 and 2 and available to stream on HBO Max.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/batman-long-halloween-why-no-riddler-explained/

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