Stranger Things Villain Will Take On Batman Next?
Stranger Things star Jamie Campbell Bower expresses interest in playing the Batman villain Scarecrow.
If you think playing one of pop culture’s most terrifying new villains — Vecna of Stranger Things — has left Jamie Campbell Bower tired of playing the bad guy, think again. In a recent interview with Geek House Show, Bower expressed interest in playing one of the few DC bad guys capable of scaring the hell out of Batman: Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka Scarecrow. In most media, Scarecrow is portrayed as a villain who develops a gas that can force his victims to experience hallucinations of their deepest fears.
Jamie Campbell Bower was asked whether or not he’d be interested in taking a role in the soon-to-be-rebooted DC Universe when he brightened to the idea of playing Scarecrow:
“There’s been a lot of chatter about Scarecrow recently, that would be cool. To do that, that would be fun. Very spooky, that would be great!”
-Jamie Campbell Bower
We have to admit, that sounds like it could be a brilliant casting choice. Not only has Jamie Campbell Bower proven he has the acting chops to play Scarecrow, but physically he’s perfect for the role. In his various appearances, Crane is usually portrayed as a lean, even gaunt man, just like Bower.
Time will tell if James Gunn and Peter Safran were listening or not, but were he to be cast, Jamie Campbell Bower would be far from the first actor to play Scarecrow in live-action. Most famously Cillian Murphy, star of the upcoming Oppenheimer, not only played Crane in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, but his version of Crane was the only antagonist to appear in all three films. David W. Thomson (Green Room) played him in Seasons 4 and 5 of the prequel series Gotham, and more recently Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men) took on the role in Season 3 of HBO Max’s Titans.
Jamie Campbell Bower has built a career playing bad guys. He plays the villain Caius in the Twilight films as well as the younger version of Gellert Grindelwald in both 2010’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and again in 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. His The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones character Jace isn’t strictly a villain, but the source material often teases the notion he could become one.
While some actors might feel pigeonholed when constantly being made the bad guy, Jamie Campbell Bower doesn’t appear to have any such concerns. Last year, GQ asked him if he wanted to play a good guy once he was done with Stranger Things, and the star explained why he was happier with the devils than the angels:
“I mean, look, I’m always interested in characters that have depth and something different about them. It’s those kinds of characters that I’ve always been drawn to and that I’ve always played. And more often than not, in cinema, the bad guy, as it were, is that person.”
-Jamie Campbell Bower
A quote like that makes him sound like a perfect addition to the cinematic Batman mythos, whether he’s playing Scarecrow or someone else. When’s the last time you heard or read someone singing the praises of The Dark Knight, for example, without giving much more credit to Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker than to Christian Bale‘s second turn as Batman?
