Batman: The Dark Knight To Trust Nolan or not?

The more I hear about the preparations for Batman: The Dark Night, the more worried I become. It's not that I didn't love Batman Begins. Chris Nolan is a wonderful director; Christian Bale played a great Bat and Bruce Wayne. I will abstain from slamming Katie Holmes.

I really just worry about how the villains are going to fit into the mix.

The biggest reason I have this fear is that Batman Begins could have been villain-less and I still would have loved the movie. That's because Begins is a coming of age story; the story of a man with no future, hitting rock bottom and coming back to see that he has a mission beyond himself. Sure, the Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul were there, but they were little more than faceless images of Batman’s inner struggles.

It's the reason that Spiderman works so well. The story is never really about the heroes and villain, their about the man and his everyday struggles. Yet, the older Batman franchise never got this part right.

This is stuff we already know, so I'm wondering if maybe I am just getting bogged down in all the casting frenzy. Still, people can argue and argue over the merits of Heath Ledger, when really, no Joker is going to work unless Nolan can tie him into Batman's sruggle in a way that neither the villains from the first film or Nicholson (though he did play a wonderfully over the top Joker in a over the top movie) ever did. I want to see the pain of loosing his family (the love for the city that meant so much to his parents) pushed to the edge by the re-appearance of their killer (if they go that way, which I believe they need to do).

If the movie falls into the rut of "bad guy (or guys) hatches plan and Batman has to stop him," I will be deeply disappointed.