Christian Bale delivered the best Batman performance so far, if you ask me, and his Bruce Wayne could have been a major DCEU pillar. Unfortunately, The Dark Knight trilogy happened well before the dawn of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has no place in the current series of DC Comics films. But Bale will return to the superhero life nonetheless, jumping over to the Marvel side of things. Reports a few weeks ago said the versatile actor was in talks with Marvel for a secret role in Thor: Love and Thunder, which happens to be the last movie of MCU Phase 4. Since then, we heard whispers about what his role might be, with fans speculating that Bale might play an awesome character from the comics or one of the villains. Now, a brand new leak claims that the actor will indeed play a villain in the film, and he might turn out to be one of the biggest MCU villains down the road.
To recap, a couple of reports a few weeks ago said that Bale will play a character that requires motion capture headgear — just like Josh Brolin and Mark Ruffalo did for Thanos and Hulk, respectively. At the time, we heard that Bale was being considered for Dario Agger and Beta Ray Bill. The latter seemed to be the crowd’s favorite choice for Bale, although nothing was official at the time.
A new scoop from The Illuminerdi says that Bale is “definitely confirmed” to play an “intergalactic villain” in Thor 4:
Unfortunately, we were unable to get a firm confirmation on the name of his character. But, we did get a glimpse of a Marvel Studios’ document which gave away some revealing tidbits about Bale’s role.
Apparently, Bale hasn’t been locked into the role officially yet, it appears there’s still paperwork to sign. However, he’s in negotiations to play a lead in the movie – one who is specifically stated to be the main villain of the film. We can also concretely confirm that he’s an alien species, who is described as being “otherworldly.”
The Illuminerdi
offers a wide variety of Marvel characters who could act or be perceived as villainous at first, including Beta Ray Bill, Dario Agger, Gorr the God Butcher, Adam Warlock, and the Silver Surfer. However, that’s all just speculation for the time being. While we have no idea who Bale’s character might be, it’s safe to assume that we might see him down the road in Phase 5 films as well. You can’t squander a big intergalactic villain. That said, it’s unclear whether Bale’s villain would deliver the next Thanos-grade threat, but it’s certainly a possibility — especially for someone with Bale’s star power.
Marvel has already confirmed that it’s working on the next epic Endgame-like movie, but we’ll need to wait a few years to get there. The Avengers team needs to be rebuilt with new characters we’ll hopefully grow to love just as much as we loved Iron Man, Cap, and Natasha. And the Marvel universe needs a few good villains to entertain us while we get to the next Avengers film, including one or two who will replace Thanos. We have no way of knowing whether Bale fits that bill, but given what he’s done in his career so far, who wouldn’t want to see him in a recurring MCU role as the top bad guy?
Thor: Love and Thunder concludes Marvel’s Phase 4, and it’s set to premiere on November 5th, 2021.
