Comic book fans know her name. Selina Kyle—Catwoman—is one of the most enduring, complex characters in the DC Universe. First appearing in Batman #1 in 1940, she’s evolved from a whip-wielding jewel thief to a fully fleshed-out antihero with a deep moral compass, a layered past, and one of the most fascinating relationships with Batman in comic history.
Then came 2004’s Catwoman—a movie that not only ditched everything iconic about the character but didn’t even try to adapt Selina Kyle. Instead, it gave us “Patience Phillips,” a new character in a knockoff catsuit with none of Selina’s charm, complexity, or canon.
In this post, we’re comparing the real Catwoman from the comics to whatever that movie was.
Performance: Not What the Comics Ordered
While Halle Berry brought energy to the role, comic book fans couldn’t help but notice the sheer disconnect. In the comics, Selina Kyle walks with confidence and cunning. She’s sharp, morally ambiguous, and fully aware of her power—emotional, intellectual, and physical.
Patience Phillips? She’s a shy, clumsy pushover who happens to stumble into a supernatural cat goddess origin story. That transformation strips away everything Selina Kyle represents: agency, grit, and control over her own destiny.
Selina Kyle’s strength doesn’t come from mystical resurrections. It comes from clawing her way up—out of trauma, out of poverty, out of Gotham’s worst neighborhoods—to become a master thief and a streetwise survivor. Berry’s performance in Catwoman is limited not because of her acting ability, but because she’s playing someone who isn’t Catwoman at all.
Portrayal: Where’s the Real Catwoman?
Let’s talk Selina Kyle, the real Catwoman. Across decades of comics—from Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, Ed Brubaker’s noir-influenced Catwoman run, to Tom King's emotionally rich depiction—Selina is a layered character. She's neither hero nor villain, and that ambiguity is her greatest strength.
She doesn’t need a magical cat origin. She doesn’t need superpowers. She doesn’t need to reinvent femininity by leaning into hyper-sexualized tropes or literal cat puns. She’s already powerful because she’s human.
The 2004 movie erases all of that. The film’s mythology—Egyptian cat gods, mystical reincarnations, and cat-powers—is pure invention. There is zero foundation in the comics for this version of the character. No ties to Gotham. No Bruce Wayne. No heist capers, no alleyway upbringing, no moral grey areas. Just a fabricated character in a leather outfit doing backflips and licking her hand.
Even the political undercurrent of Selina’s character—a woman surviving and thriving in a male-dominated, corrupt city—is flattened into “girl power” clichés and shallow feminism. The character in the comics resists oppression. The character in the movie resists bad skin cream.
Conclusion: A Clawless Adaptation
If you’re a fan of the comics, Catwoman (2004) isn’t just disappointing—it feels like a betrayal. It strips away everything that made Selina Kyle iconic and replaces it with a hollow caricature dressed in latex.
Yes, Catwoman has had many interpretations in comics—gritty, glamorous, villainous, heroic—but there’s always a consistent throughline: she’s Selina Kyle. She’s smart, tough, and deeply human. The 2004 film chose to discard that legacy entirely.
So, while Halle Berry wore the mask, she never truly played Catwoman. And the real Selina? She’s still waiting for her story to be told right.
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