James Gunn Can Fix Superman's Movie Villain Curse (By Learning From Batman)

Having a variety of villains is great for allowing Batman movies to explore different types of stories, but after years and years of great Bat-baddies, it's led to a surprising bonus: new Batman villains feed the hype machine like there's no tomorrow.

When a new Batman movie is announced, fans are desperate to find out which villans will feature, even if it's somebody they've seen before, and immediately theorizing how the movie will use that character. Tom Hardy playing a more comics-accurate, methodical Bane? Consider audiences piqued! Is Colin Farrell reimagining Danny DeVito's gruesome Penguin as a snarky mobster? Jump aboard the hype train! Cesar Romero handing the Joker makeup kit over to Jack Nicholson? 25 tickets, please!

At this point, bringing back an old villain creates hype in itself, because we not only know the villain but are familiar with older versions of them and eager to see how the new one measures up. It doesn't hurt that the Batman movies have an excellent villain track record. Who could have predicted that Heath Ledger would surpass Nicholson as the Joker? What fan could have guessed where Paul Dano would go with the Riddler, a character Jim Carrey turned into a human cartoon in "Batman Forever?" 

That's the kind of buzz Superman movies should have behind them. Instead, all we have right now is, "What kind of haircut will Lex have this time around?" And the ironic thing is that, if we just look at the comics, Superman's assortment of bad guys is just as interesting as Batman's.