Small Roles for Gordon-Levitt, Cotillard in 'Dark Knight Rises' Could Be Deceptive

COMMENTARY | At this point, even the slightest bit of confirmed news about "The Dark Knight Rises" is considered a fairly big deal. The forthcoming Batman film has been the subject of rampant speculation even while "The Dark Knight" was still in theaters. The fact that director Christopher Nolan is notoriously tight lipped when it comes to his film projects results in very little solid information among the mountain of rumors about the film.

The latest news to come out, however, is official. Warner Brothers has confirmed in a press release that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard have joined the cast of "The Dark Knight Rises." The release even announces the roles they're playing: a Gotham city beat cop and a Wayne Enterprises board member, respectively.

The announcement is a half surprise. Rumors have been swirling for over a month that both actors were in talks to join the film. The surprise is in the rather minor sounding roles that they will play. Given the stature of these actors, it was expected that each would play a fairly significant role in the film.

The most persistent rumors had Cotillard as Talia Al-Ghul and Gordon-Levitt as Alberto Falcone, each the offspring of villains in "Batman Begins." Both actors have worked with Christopher Nolan before on his cerebral blockbuster "Inception." In fact, Nolan seems to be drawing heavily from his "Inception" cast, having previously secured Tom Hardy for the role of Bane. Nolan clearly enjoyed working with this group of actors, and it would seem they enjoyed working with him enough to join the film, even in smaller roles.

This isn't the first time that Nolan has cast a recognizable actor in a minor part. Early into the production of "The Dark Knight," the casting of Anthony Michael Hall, of 1980s teen films and more recently TV's "The Dead Zone" fame, was confirmed. This led to rampant speculation about which character Hall was cast as. Nearly all of those who were guessing pegged Hall as playing Edward Nigma, aka the Riddler. Ultimately, Hall played a TV news reporter rather than the iconic villain everyone thought he would play.

Even though the press release confirms the characters each actor will play, there are still some who continue to speculate about the true nature of those roles. In particular Cotillard's character, identified as Miranda Tate, is still being rumored to actually be Talia Al-Ghul who has managed to worm her way onto the board of Wayne Enterprises. While this isn't exceptionally likely, it actually is a possibility. There has been talk of the League of Shadows, a group of assassins lead by Ra's Al-Ghul in "Batman Begins," being a major component to the new film. And of course Ra's Al-Ghul himself was revealed to be masquerading as another character in that film, so there's a certain precedent for it.

There's also the possibility of deliberate misdirection in the character descriptions given in the press release. Nearly all previous (albiet unconfirmed) reports had Gordon-Levitt pegged as playing a villainous character, so to learn that he's playing a beat cop working with Commissioner Gordon (played as before by Gary Oldman) is certainly unexpected.

However, it's always possible that the character may be a dirty cop; there's certainly been plenty of precedent for that in the series so far. However, given that there's already the confirmations of Bane and Catwoman (being played by Anne Hathaway), it seems unlikely that Nolan would load in too many more villainous characters. It seems likely that Nolan will continue to be tight lipped about pretty much every aspect of the film until a few months shy of the release.