Now that the long, agonizing wait is over and The Dark Knight is finally being released this week, we at MovieRetriever.com find ourselves faced with a difficult situation. For months, we've been debating, arguing, and geeking out over what we wanted from Christopher Nolan's sequel to Batman Begins and, now that it's here, all we can think is - what the heck are we going to talk about now? Fortunately, movie-nerds are experts at living in the "what if" of the future, rather than the mundane world of the now, so we're turning our critical eye away from Dark Knight and focusing instead on what we're hoping to see in Batman 3. Granted, Christopher Nolan and the rest of the DK gang haven't confirmed that they'll be making a third chapter in their wildly popular Batman revamp, but, given the pre-release buzz, we're assuming that Dark Knight is going to make so much money that Warner Brothers will do whatever they can to bring the Begins/Dark Knight crew back to close out the Bat-trilogy.

And while we have a wish-list a mile long of the stuff we really, really want to see in a third Chris Nolan Batman flick (Can you say Harley Quinn?), there are certain hallmarks of the past Bat-franchises that we really, really DON'T want to see in any upcoming Batman movies, and we're worried enough about those things that we feel they justify immediate discussion. So, take heed Warner Brothers, Christian Bale, and everyone else who'll be rooting for an immediate sequel greenlight after Dark Knight makes a bazillion dollars this weekend...

Here are the Top Seven Things We DO NOT Want to See in Batman 3:

1). ROBIN

This isn't going to win us any fans with the comic nerds, Bat-traditionalists, or the messageboards at ChrisODonnell.org, but Robin simply can't appear in the next Chris Nolan Batman movie. Why? Aside from the fact that Christian Bale himself told reporters that, and we quote, "If Robin crops up in one of the new Batman films, I’ll be chaining myself up somewhere and refusing to go to work"?  Well, simply put, the character, while an important part of the Batman mythos, just doesn't work in Nolan's realistic, camp-free reimagining of Gotham City. Robin's origin - a young orphaned trapeze artist who's adopted by Batman and taught to fight crime - is operatic, exaggerated and implausible, which might work in a Tim Burton fantasy world, but doesn't really cut it on the gritty streets of Nolan's Gotham. There are so many real world parallels in Nolan's Batman movies, particularly in Dark Knight, that introducing Robin would immediately have audiences looking at Christian Bale hanging out with this pre-teen and trying not to think about Michael Jackson or why Jim Gordon isn't bringing him up on child endangerment charges. If WB insists on a Robin, he's got to be an angry young teenager (not a Jake Lloyd-aged kid), who follows in Batman's footsteps on his own out of equal parts rage and hero worship. But if circus-trained, 10-year-old Dick Grayson shows up... ugh, Bale won't be the only one refusing to return to Gotham.

2). BAT-PLANE

We understand, even with the more serious tone of the new Batman movies, that Warner Brothers is still going market the hell out of them to children and that every movie needs a certain number of spin-off toys to keep the tweens and middle-aged collectors happy.  And that's why we're completely cool with the Bat-Pod motorcycle in Dark Knight.  Heck, with Batman's role as an urban warrior and 5-dollar-a-gallon gas, having a motorbike to back-up the Batmobile even makes a lot of sense. But the Bat-plane is where we draw the line.  While the cool Bat-symbol-shaped jet plane looked awesome in Burton's Batman, it was also completely impractical (Joker took it down with one bullet!) and makes NO sense in Nolan's Gotham. Batman isn't Superman. He doesn't need to fly across the globe at a moment's notice - at least, not in Chris Nolan's version of Batman.  Batman is Gotham's protector and, if he uses a jet-plane to get his lazy Bat-ass across town, that's about 1000 times more environmentally damaging than a fleet of gas-guzzling Hummers.  Justice League Batman and animated Batman can have a Bat-plane, but Nolan's street vigilante Batman needs to keep his wheels on the ground.

3). SUPERPOWERS

While, yes, we consider Batman to be a superhero, one of the things we love about the world Christopher Nolan created in Batman Begins (and that he explores even more deeply in Dark Knight) is that everything seems so eerily plausible. Ra's al Ghul is a terrorist, Scarecrow is a drug-pusher, Joker is a psychopath - their exploits might be a little fantastic, but there are no magical abilities or otherworldly superpowers in sight.  And that's how we want to keep things.  Unfortunately, that means that certain aspects of certain Bat-characters just won't work.  We can't have a 9-foot-tall Clayface, walking down the street like an animatronic pile of mud; we can't have Lazarus Pits resurrecting Ra's; we can't have Mr. Freeze freeze-rays; we can't have Poison Ivy seducing men with a spray of perfume (Jeph Loeb, the writer of some great Batman comics and the terrible Ultimates 3, disagrees with us); we can't have an army of housecats resurrecting Selina Kyle - that all might work in comics and animation, but it won't work with Nolan's Batman.  And, you know what?  Big deal.  There's SO much else you can do.  Make Catwoman an actual powers-free, master cat-burglar instead of a feline dominatrix, make Poison Ivy an eco-terrorist - keep the flying and x-ray vision in the Superman movies and leave Nolan's Batman in the real world.

4). RAMPANT DC COMICS CROSSOVERS

According to the Hollywood Reporter, executives at Warner Brothers have been meeting with representatives from DC Comics (Warners owns DC) to discuss revamping plans for future DC Comics superhero movies. The general rumor is that Warners is allegedly proposing that DC start creating a more interconnected film universe, obviously inspired by the recent Marvel Comics movies in which Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk shared common characters, supposedly to foster the potential of an uber-crossover Avengers film sometime in the near future. For DC, this might potentially lead to Superman characters appearing in a Wonder Woman movie, the Flash dropping by a Green Arrow movie, and so on and so forth.  However, even though we really dug the moment in Batman Begins when Christian Bale mentioned Metropolis, we really don't want to see any other DC superheroes popping by for a cameo in the next Batman movie.  Why not?  Well, part of the reason is our previous "no superpowers" rant - a JLA satellite makes no sense in Nolan's Bat-world - and the other part has to do with not packing the story with stupid in-jokes and tangential characters. We love nerdy comics references, but the Nick Fury scene in Iron Man wisely came after the credits because it really had nothing to do with the damn film (the unrelenting SHIELD references were a bit much). And the Tony Stark cameo in Hulk seemed so tacked on and out of place - the movie ends and then we immediately get this Robert Downey Jr. walk-on that has nothing to do with the previous story. If DC decides to ape Marvel's success, we're just worried that every side character in Batman 3 will have some stupid superhero analogue and the nerds next to us in the theater will spend more time looking for Barry Allen's "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" cameo than paying attention to the story. Save the walk-ons for Cannonball Run and keep Batman a lone crime fighter.

5). MATCHES MALONE

OK, if you don't know who Matches Malone is, that means you probably dated in high school.  "Matches" is a criminal alter-ego used by Bruce Wayne in the Batman comic books - basically, he slaps on a mustache and a New Jersey accent and pretends to be a crook to allow him to go undercover in Gotham's criminal underworld. And while Dark Knight definitely focuses on Batman becoming much more of a master detective than he was in Batman Begins (which is a good thing) and a few Batman comic writers have done some decent Matches stories, the idea of Christian Bale having to glue on a Van Dyke and pretend he's a Soprano makes us wince.  Don't get us wrong.  Bale is a good enough actor that he could probably pull it off, but the concept is so silly (a hat and disguise makes Gotham's most photographed playboy unrecognizable?) that we just don't want to make the poor Brit go there. We're all for respecting continuity and developing Batman as a crime fighter, but undercover work for Chris Nolan's Bruce Wayne is simply out of the question.

6). MORE THAN TWO BAD GUYS AT A TIME

Since the modern age of the cinema of the spectacle first began back in 1975 with Jaws, Hollywood has functioned under the rule that, if you're making the sequel to a summer blockbuster, you have to super-size everything about the next chapter - more characters, more FX, more bad guys.  However, particularly with superhero movies, this rule is almost always a creative death sentence. X-Men 3, Spider-Man 3, Batman Forever (which is almost as bad as Batman & Robin, but strangely doesn't attract half the rancor)... they all spent so much time setting up their armies of over-the-top supporting characters and villains that they completely lost focus on what people previously liked about X-Men, Spider-Man, and Batman films and, as a result, all three sucked hardcore.  We're fine with both Joker and Two-Face showing up in Dark Knight (particularly since Harvey Dent doesn't become Two-Face until later on in the film), but two's the limit and that's definitely how we want to keep things in Batman 3.  To make sure that the story doesn't collapse under the weight of stupid character origins and tangents that take you away from the lead character, no superhero movie can have more than 2 villains at a time (and there should be a limit on new supporting characters too, so you're not stuck with dealing with Batgirl, Robin, or any other embarrassing members of the Bat-family).  If Two-Face comes back in Batman 3, that means Nolan only gets ONE new bad guy.  If both Two-Face and Joker return (with the Joker obviously being recast), then NO new bad guys. Bigger is not necessarily better, so let's keep the Bat-focus on quality over quantity.

7). INSANELY TRICKED-OUT WAYNE MANOR

If you can sense a running theme throughout our seven DON'Ts, it's pretty much "let's keep things believable." Christopher Nolan has done a tremendous job at taking something as mythical and big as Batman and grounding it in the very real world.  We're not saying that every Batman movie has to function this way - we still love Burton's Batman movies - but, for the new series of Batman Begins films, keeping things plausible seems like a good way to proceed.  For example, at the end of Batman Begins, Wayne Manor burns down and Alfred suggests that Bruce Wayne make some structural improvements to the Batcave when they rebuild the mansion.  (In Dark Knight, Batman operates out of a temporary Batcave.)  So, obviously, if and when Wayne Manor returns in Batman 3, the Batcave will look a fair sight more impressive.  We're cool with that.  The catch is - the new Batcave still has to exist in the real world.  That means there can't be an underground airplane hangar or a giant Bat-symbol carved into the floor or a 300-foot-tall elevator for the Batmobile.  Why?  Because how the hell is Bruce Wayne going to explain to a team of contractors why he needs a 3-million dollar, completely impractical underground car elevator that leads to a secret passage without one of them asking, "Um... OK, Mr. Wayne, but just to confirm... you're Batman, right?"  We're not saying that the new Batcave can't be cool, but let's leave the cartoonish, German-expressionist, Anton Furst Bat-architecture to Tim Burton and come up with something a little bit more practical for our twenty-first-century Batman.