David Goyer says he knows the theme for 'Batman 3'

Whether you agree or not, judging from both fan reaction and near universal critical acclaim, “The Dark Knight” will almost certainly go down as the greatest comic book movie of all-time, with a performance from Heath Ledger that is being hailed as one of the greatest on-screen villains ever.

Now all Christopher Nolan, his brother Jonathan, David Goyer, and an as yet unnamed villain have to do is top it.

“I think that’s the scariest thing – to think, could we come up with a third movie that was as good as the first two? Can we top ourselves?” screenwriter David Goyer asked aloud, almost rhetorically, in a recent conversation with MTV News. “Doing it a third time would be a big proposition.”

Make no mistake about it, though, a third film HAS been discussed, Goyer confessed, revealing that, while nothing is concrete, both a villain and a theme have been bandied about.

“We’ve only talked loosely about it, though, Chris and I,” Goyer said.

Interestingly, it’s the theme, and not the villain, that most interests me, especially given how the latter seems inexorably tied to the former in this new modern Batman universe. (Fear the predominant issue in “Begins” precipitating the introduction of Scarecrow, escalation in “Knight” similarly calling for The Joker.

The fact that Goyer has a theme he wants to keep in mind for a possible “Batman 3″ means he also has a direction, a crisis, and, yes, a villain.

So what is it?

“I have one,” Goyer said laughing. “But I’m not going to tell you. Chris is very particular about that.

“I do think, though, that if there’s not a third film – these two movies stand on their own,” he added. “I think it could go either way.”

Not us. We want a “Batman 3.” So we’ll throw it out to you: Now that you’ve seen “The Dark Knight,” now that you know how it ends, what could be the theme of “Batman 3″? Who could be the villain to fit that theme? Sound off below.