This is where Michael Uslan, the producer in question that is stating that a Mr. Freeze standalone movie could work, might need to take off his fanboy hat and think like a producer for a second since Mr. Freeze is a much more impressive villain than Arnold Schwarzenegger made him out to be. But at the same time, if any realism is going to be given to the movie, which is nearly impossible since like it or not humans can’t continue to function if they’re ice-cold, then the movie magic and pseudoscience would have to be exceptionally strong in this type of a movie. The reason that Joker worked so well, or at least one reason, is that he was allowed to have a very real-world origin that was realistic despite how tragic it was and could have happened to anyone that’s down and out. There’s a reason why Joker’s story resonates with so many people, and it’s because he spoke to the people in a very visceral way, and his voice and message reached those that felt that they’d been taken advantage of and pushed around too often, meaning that his chaos was able to spread in a way that would consume pretty much anyone who was caught in the path of it.
The issue with Mr. Freeze is that he’s not just a villain that’s been pushed to the side a few times, he’s one of those that would only be able to exist in a one in a million circumstance, and it’s likely that he wouldn’t go unopposed in his own movie either if the idea was to actually turn him into a super-villain by the end of the movie. Even in Joker, Arthur Fleck hadn’t really become the crime prince by the time the credits rolled since hew as locked up in Arkham Asylum and looked as though he was making his escape. Freeze is the kind of villain that could likely figure out a way to outwit his captors and possibly come up with a plan and several contingencies to utilize if the plan didn’t work. But again, there’s the idea of his origin and the fact that he would kick the reality of the movie out the door at a certain point. Where the Joker was realistic in a sense, Mr. Freeze would need a lot of work to turn out the same way, perhaps a rare skin condition that would require him to wear a suit, or perhaps something else that might be convincing that could be used as a plot device. But creating someone that is literally ice-cold and can still function like a regular human being so long as he’s wearing a suit or standing in sub-zero temperatures would be kind of difficult to see in a realistic setting.
This is the only problem when trying to put too much realism into comic book movies, the science and the crushing sense of reality tend to interfere with the otherwise impossible nature of the comics since things just tend to happen and circumstances are almost always right when it comes time to dish out superpowers. Mr. Freeze is a decent villain since he is fairly dangerous despite not being much of a hand to hand combatant. His schemes and his ability to outsmart people is where he comes in as a true threat since he’s a brilliant character that knows how to plan ahead and knows how to create weapons that can immobilize or possibly kill those that stand in his way. Plus, his origin story is actually pretty sad since the whole idea of his foray into the criminal underworld was driven by the need to find some way to cure his wife, who he’d stored in a cryogenic container. So really, Mr. Freeze’s story was all about curing his wife to start with, but once he broke bad he simply didn’t feel the need to stop, and this put him on Batman’s list of enemies since his schemes started to get bigger and bigger and his criminal acts were simply too much to come back from at one point.
In a way, it does feel possible to make a standalone movie for this character, but at the same time, it needs to be handled with great care since there’s a huge possibility that the movie would be mishandled in some crucial way and that it would suffer accordingly since the realism would need to walk a fine line since the origin story of this particular character is not a realistic one, to begin with. He does have a tragic story to tell, and it’s possible that an actor could be found to make it great, but it needs a lot of work. That, and if every villain is going to be given an origin story, it’s likely that people will start thinking of Batman as the real villain if everyone is finally allowed to give a reason why they turned bad.
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