#chronological also turned out to be descending order how tidy

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

@darthlordcommie okay well that is the wrong answer because Edward Nigma has been riddling around for like 74 slutty slutty years and there's just far too many variations on him not to have a clearly defined boundary on this question, so we're going to stick to live action because that's quick and what I spent all night thinking up my answer for. so. let's do this chronologically:

Frank Gorshin (Batman '66) - 11/10

this man is everything to me. the 60s show is absolutely lawless and I love how utterly detached it is from any modern notions of what a Batman adaptation should look like, including a Riddler who's considerably more off his shits than Cesar Romero's relatively chill mustachioed Joker. on a scale of 1-10 Gorshin pretty consistently plays the Riddler at an 11, and has been rated accordingly; he's so manic that it's genuinely a little exhausting to watch him jump around cackling and contorting himself and crunching on the scenery.

none of the villains in Batman '66 really have much a life outside of their costumed personas, but what we're lacking in interiority Gorshin more than makes up for by being central in defining the Riddler as a character. the Riddler was kind of an editorial nobody at the time of the show, having existed for nearly twenty years but boasting less than a dozen comic appearances, but damn if Gorshin didn't take those scraps and run with them. he even designed the green suit!

(I should mention that the iconic question mark cane also originates from '66, but it was in an episode where the Riddler was played by a totally different guy because Frank Gorshin was in the middle of negotiating for higher pay. king of knowing your worth.)

in conclusion if it were possible to grind up every second of footage of Frank Gorshin playing the Riddler and snort it directly up my nose I would do it in a heartbeat.

Jim Carrey (Batman Forever) - 9/10

I'm going to be totally real with you: I think for the 21st century Riddler enjoyer, this might be as good as it's ever going to get. Jim Carrey is going balls to the wall at his absolute Jim Carreyest, playing a rubber-faced Riddler hellbent on homoerotic revenge.

look, I have to say this - a lot of this Riddler's appeal is that he's gay and insane. he wants to fuck Bruce Wayne so bad it makes him look STUPID in an endless parade of increasingly bedazzled outfits and more elaborate neon orange hair styles. and it fucking rules. my most controversial opinion about Batman Forever is that it's actually significantly worse than its much-panned successor, Batman and Robin, but at least it has Jim Carrey tying himself in knots and enunciating like a psychopath and generally pissing off Tommy Lee Jones with his unsanctioned buffoonery.

is his actual Evil Scheme kind of confusing and stupid? yes, which is why he didn't get a perfect 10. but truly who gives a shit about the plot when there's a scene in which he wears a fake mole to look more like Val Kilmer's Bruce? goddamn I love this fruity little freak.

Cory Michael Smith (Gotham) - ???/10

despite the fact that I've spent more time with Smith's Riddler than any of the others by virtue of him being a main character on an inexplicably long-running television show, I'm sort of stumped here. Gotham's Riddler is difficult to quantify because, as far as I've been able to observe, the writers got bored and completely reinvented him roughly every twelve episodes or so with varying amounts of cohesion between personality shifts, leaving Smith flailing to find consistency in the character.

I would never accuse Gotham of being a bastion of stellar writing for any of its hefty main and recurring cast, but the Ed is notably the one whom the writers seem least sure what to do with at any given time. he's a dorky and irritating forensics examiner with a penchant for riddles and overstepping workplace boundaries, until he's plagued by intrusive thoughts that manifest as an evil double talking to him in the mirror, until he's a nervous murderer sweatily trying to cover his tracks, until he's a DELIGHTED murderer bringing home random men for his bestie/roommate the Penguin to mutilate, until he's a stone cold mastermind engineering a scheme to ruin Gordon's life, until he's just hanging out in Arkham waiting for the writers to give him another plotline, until he's the Penguin's hyper-competent political advisor, until -

you see the problem here. Gotham's Riddler isn't so much a character who develops the way the Penguin or Bruce Wayne or even the unforgivable Jim Gordon do; he just kind of does things to cause problems whenever the plot is feeling too slow. I'm currently in the middle of season three during which he's on the receiving end of an incredibly clumsy plot written to get him and the Penguin working against each other, and I truly can't see things getting any better any time soon.

if you can't tell by now this character vexes the shit out of me, but I'm going to make things easy on myself by splitting his rating in two, much like his personality was doing until the writers presumably realized they were being grossly ableist even for a Batman adaptation.

season one original flavor forensic examiner Ed Nygma: 10/10

man I fuckin LOVE this guy. he's not even the Riddler, he's literally just your autism-coded coworker who's really good at his job because it's his special interest. as I noted many times in my liveblogs of season one and two, he seems to be the only person at the GCPD who's actually solving any crimes. as I've also noted in my liveblogs, I assume that Smith was hired on the strength of his performance as this pre-Riddler version of Ed, because he's really good at it and is kind of hopelessly endearing. I want to put him on a keychain and carry him around with me. RIP king, I miss you every day.

this bitch: 1/10

literally choke. you're nothing to me.

Paul Dano (The Batman 2022) - 0/10

I want to drown this pathetic little bastard as an act of mercy.

So, for Riddler's portrayals, how would you order them on a scale of "I want to bully him (affectionate)" to "I want to bully him (derogotory)"?

I need you to be more specific here are we talking just live action or what