THE DARK KNIGHT Star Aaron Eckhart Believes Future Superhero Movies Need To Be More Grounded

THE DARK KNIGHT Star Aaron Eckhart Believes Future Superhero Movies Need To Be More Grounded

With so much talk of "superhero fatigue," The Dark Knight star Aaron Eckhart has shared his belief that future movies need to be more grounded and take their cues from Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.

By JoshWilding - Jan 09, 2024 06:01 AM EST
Filed Under: The Dark Knight
Source: Screen Rant

There's been a lot of talk about "superhero fatigue" in recent months, with that mostly stemming from what proved to be a difficult year for the genre in terms of box office receipts.

It's way too soon to write the genre off, but Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios are already in the midst of rebooting the DCEU as the DCU. Marvel Studios, meanwhile, is going back to the drawing board on countless projects in a bid to restore faith in the Multiverse Saga. 

The next couple of years will be crucial for both brands but The Dark Knight star Aaron Eckhart has now shared his thoughts on why today's superhero movies need to ground themselves in reality by taking their cues from Christopher Nolan.

"It's not what I would tell them. It's what's on film. It's what Chris did," he tells Screen Rant. "If you take what your question right there and break it up and analyze it, and you say, "The Dark Knight," which is Chris Nolan, "brought [superheroes] back," from where? Where did he bring them back from? He brought it and put it right in reality."

"He put it in truth, in reality and made it concrete and real and tangible. It was in fantasy land. And I haven't seen a lot of those movies lately, but I think it's gone back into fantasy land. Look at Heath's performance. Look at his makeup. His makeup looked like he did it at home, right? And that's what we want."

"We want a superhero that's grounded in reality, and we want villains that are grounded in reality," Eckhart continued. "And Chris did that perfectly. I think it set a benchmark for that, so I would say just get back to truth. Truth is where it's at."

The actor makes some valid points here, but "grounded" superhero movies continue to split opinions (especially when they veer too far from the source material). Then again, it's hard to argue with the success that the likes of Joker and The Batman have found in recent years. 

Eckhart played Two-Face in The Dark Knight and has since gone on to appear in movies like Love Happens, Battle: Los Angeles, The Rum Diary, Olympus Has Fallen and its sequel, and Midway.

Can superhero movies be saved with the likes of Deadpool 3 and Superman: Legacy on the horizon? Some will argue they don't need saving after one bad year but it feels like we've reached a breaking point with a genre which clearly needs to evolve. 

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Batmangina
Batmangina - 1/9/2024, 6:42 AM
Let me be the FIRST to cast him as Captain Obvious.
FireandBlood
FireandBlood - 1/9/2024, 6:45 AM
We gotta stop expecting these people do what Chris did, though. Because they’re not Chris, and never will be.

These movies are the way they are now not because of the lack of realism, but due to the fact that 95% of these movies are mandated cogs in whatever shared universe machine is going on at any given time, something Chris refused to be a part of a long time ago.
LSHF
LSHF - 1/9/2024, 6:46 AM
Well, if he says so.

But audiences want variety, so not everyone will agree.
LSHF
LSHF - 1/9/2024, 6:47 AM
It seems everyone has a simple answer for a complex issue.
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 6:47 AM
Works for Batman well.... Doesn't work so well for most other superheroes.
This also isn't news
lazlodaytona
lazlodaytona - 1/9/2024, 8:23 AM
@Slotherin - That's exactly what I was going to post.
Trying to ground characters like Green Lantern, who spends a lot of time in multiple galaxies with lots of aliens, Martian Manhunter, Lobo, Grodd, ect (there's tons more) is fruitless. They are fantastical characters with a lot of large stories that are dang near impossible to put into realism.

Batman is dang near easy for ANYONE to ground in reality. Probably could do so too with characters like Plastic Man, Cyborg, Birds of Prey, Black Lightning, Black Mask, Deadshot and Deathstroke, and so on. Characters that might have a superpower, most do not, but can ground them not so badly in reality.
TheNewYorker
TheNewYorker - 1/9/2024, 9:41 AM
@Slotherin - how would you know.. have you seen it tried somewhere for “most other superheroes”?
If you have, put us on!
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 10:57 AM
@TheNewYorker - define what grounded means to you and we'll go from there.
HashTagSwagg
HashTagSwagg - 1/9/2024, 6:47 AM
I have the same issue with the more recent anime live-action stuff, it doesn't have to be completely grounded in realism but believability should come first.
DrReedRichards
DrReedRichards - 1/9/2024, 9:11 AM
@HashTagSwagg -

"I invested too much on a certain recent adaptation flopping because I can't stand its source material's inescapable popularity, but it backfired and now I don't wanna eat crow."
HashTagSwagg
HashTagSwagg - 1/9/2024, 9:18 AM
@DrReedRichards - Huh?
JustAWaffle
JustAWaffle - 1/9/2024, 9:57 AM
@HashTagSwagg - Exactly. Grounding something doesn’t mean losing the characters originality nor the fantastical elements that come with some of them. It’s just creating a setting, plot, and character development that fosters believability within that framework.

When it’s just contrived and uncreative it loses its potency and people lose interest in the overall story.

It’s an easy example, but the Marvels was a jumbled mess that piggybacked off of a few set up worlds in the MCU, assumed too much of the audiences interest, and didn’t set up the characters in a decent situation and development process for the audience to give 2 licks. Therefore it didn’t gain the traction that it could have had.
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 10:59 AM
@JustAWaffle - to be fair, Marvels was grounded in one overlooked manner.
JustAWaffle
JustAWaffle - 1/9/2024, 3:58 PM
@Slotherin - how so
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/10/2024, 4:04 PM
@JustAWaffle - Danvers taking out the Supreme Intelligence didn't suddenly make everything all good in the universe.
Yeah, it weakened the Kree Empire's capacity to dominate everyone but it also [frick]ed with the livelihood of innocent people who had little to nothing personally to do with the conflict.
Then there was the destruction of the Skrull settlement where for all their efforts they still took casualties and Kamala had to face the harsh reality that her idol is very much flawed and conflicts with her idealism.
I guess that's actually 2 overlooked things.
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 6:49 AM
Also, Two-Face wasn't as realistic as people might like to think.
Guy had half a mouth but spoke perfectly.
Twenty23Three
Twenty23Three - 1/9/2024, 7:15 AM
@Slotherin - dude was half way to a walking skeleton.
lazlodaytona
lazlodaytona - 1/9/2024, 8:30 AM
@Slotherin - and his face was CGI at that point; definitely not practical effects.
@Twenty23Three




Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 6:51 AM
I should state I think there's a balance to be struck such as in Civil War where all the fantastical superhero elements are there but the world reactions and consequences are grounded. If he means anything like that I could agree.
kg8817
kg8817 - 1/9/2024, 9:28 AM
@Slotherin - Yeah this is the take I actually agree with. Endgame was already a 3 hour movie - why didn’t we explore MORE of the consequences of - as Banner says - TRILLIONS dead. The glimpse of the snap we saw in WandaVision? WHY wasn’t that in Endgame?

We saw only a glimpse of devastation of 50% of people on earth being gone. We already saw other worlds in the Guardiand movies - they could have focused briefly on those other worlds.

You can make fantasty elements and world ending scenarios in these movies, but the believability comes from the consequences of these actions grounded in reality.

The MCU is failing because now we’re being told there are variants and multiple versions of characters out there, and not one of them are even acknowledging how BONKERS that would be to experience that, except for Peter Parker.
ObserverIO
ObserverIO - 1/9/2024, 10:28 AM
@Slotherin - It's also about building things up so that they don't seem silly. Like Endgame's finale was batshit crazy but after the slow build up and introducing of all these elements step by step, everything made perfect sense. The audience was fully invested in the world.

But it does seem like "Fantasyland" now because they've stopped doing that.
Look at this years flops, The Marvels, The Flash, etc. The GA sit down to watch those and it just all seems silly.

Why are we in space, who are all these superheroes why does that guy run fast, wtf is a Justice League, should I know?
They skipped ahead of where the audience were, so the audience is lost.

Like Superman Legacy. If that movie just throws rando superheroes at the audience and expects the audience to know who they are then it's just gonna seem like magical, mystical things are happening because "Fantasyland".
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 11:00 AM
@ObserverIO - eh... I don't really see what The Marvels did that was so out there that something like Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't doing.
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 11:10 AM
@ObserverIO - what I will say though is that like you said Endgame had all that build up to help people accept it.


Afterward I think it was expected that the fantastical things were more normalized.
For me, they were.

And that was an exciting thing imo in some ways for superhero fans because the attempts of prior films like the X-Men series to give us grounded takes and move away from yellow spandex didn't seem to be as necessary.
ObserverIO
ObserverIO - 1/9/2024, 11:13 AM
@Slotherin - The key difference is that GOTG has an opening set on Earth where one boy is kidnapped and taken to an alien galaxy.

Then it's literally fantasyland, but it's Alice in Fantasyland. Everything we see from then onwards is this weird alien arena that Peter Quill has grown up in. Everything makes sense because it's supposed to be alien.

The Marvels is just a lot all at once. Suddenly Photon is a superhero, Captain Marvel is space legendary and Nick Fury has a space command?

And that's even assuming that you saw WandaVision and Ms. Marvel, not just the Captain Marvel movie.
ObserverIO
ObserverIO - 1/9/2024, 11:15 AM
@Slotherin - But still, The Marvels is a lesser example. Compared to most DCEU offerings it's practically The Dark Knight.
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 11:21 AM
@ObserverIO - that's fair, it did undergo a lot of changes that assumed you saw everything before it.
Though so did Endgame and Avengers.

I'll say that like Avengers however it does offer some context clues that help mainly in dialogue and in the scene where Carol uses the Skrull machine to access their memories.

It definitely assumes you saw prior films but admittedly that's not something unique even to Phase 4 or 5
ObserverIO
ObserverIO - 1/9/2024, 11:28 AM
@Slotherin - It's not. But prior TV series? That might be a harder sell to the average cinemagoer.
Slotherin
Slotherin - 1/9/2024, 11:36 AM
@ObserverIO - fair.

Especially when said show is only on one streaming service (to my understanding).
WhateverItTakes
WhateverItTakes - 1/9/2024, 6:56 AM
We have either black female genius disabled drivers people can't get more grounded than that
Urubrodi
Urubrodi - 1/9/2024, 6:59 AM
Not every superhero character translates well to a grounded setting. Just because it works well with Batman does not mean it will work well with Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man or Green Lantern and so on. That's a wrong way of thinking. Take a look at the One Piece adaptation for example, it's as far from grounded as it can be, but it's true to the manga/anime.
LSHF
LSHF - 1/9/2024, 9:01 AM
@Urubrodi - I've heard nothing but good things about One Piece.
Urubrodi
Urubrodi - 1/9/2024, 10:52 AM
@LSHF - I'm a massive fan of the anime, watched all episodes, and can say that for a live action adaptation they actually managed to do a pretty decent job.
Conquistador
Conquistador - 1/9/2024, 7:06 AM
But aren't they always grounded until they need to expand?

MCU was pretty grounded until Thor and Avengers when Aliens came into the mix.

If Nolan's Batman continues on after 3 movies I'm sure it would have gotten less and less beleivable. I see his point though, but if Gunn is taking his inspiration from Star Wars, then it's highly unlikely DC is going that route.
lazlodaytona
lazlodaytona - 1/9/2024, 8:32 AM
@UniqNo - Inspiration from Star Wars?!

Since when?
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