The director of two successful Batman film is not only gearing up for a third, but has been chosen by Warner Brothers to mentor the next Superman project. The director's 'realistic' take on the Batman franchise has garnered praise from worldwide audiences.
In a 2008 interview with MTV News promoting the release of
The Dark Knight, Nolan discussed his motivation behind helming the iconic character's cinematic re-visioning:
“I think of it as a film that just exists in the cinematic realm," he explained,
"I don't think of it as a comic book movie or just a comic book movie — and that's something that in the whole process — where from the screenwriting point of view or the production point of view and with all departments and everything we would never let people off the hook with the notion 'it's a comic book movie.'"
"We just tried to make a movie that stands as a movie. The fact that it happens to be based on a long history of this comic book character I think is irrelevant — I think it's on us to make a great movie and not rely on the fact that it's a comic book movie or excuse certain things because it's a comic book movie. We didn't want to do either; we just wanted to make as great of a movie that we possibly could.”
During the same press junket, Nolan went into detail about how Batman's film universe; specifically, how it doesn't leave room for other DC comic heroes:
“I don’t think our Batman, our Gotham, lends itself to that kind of cross-fertilization. It goes back to one of the first things we wrangled with when we first started putting the story together: Is this a world in which comic books already exist? Is this a world in which superheroes already exist? If you think of “Batman Begins” and you think of the philosophy of this character trying to reinvent himself as a symbol, we took the position — we didn’t address it directly in the film, but we did take the position philosophically — that superheroes simply don’t exist. If they did, if Bruce knew of Superman or even of comic books, then that’s a completely different decision that he’s making when he puts on a costume in an attempt to become a symbol. It’s a paradox and a conundrum, but what we did is go back to the very original concept and idea of the character. In his first appearances, he invents himself as a totally original creation. It’s a different universe. It’s a different way of looking at it. Now, it’s been done successfully, very successfully, in the comics so I don’t dispute it as an approach. It just isn’t the approach we took. We had to make a decision for Batman Begins.”
With the gears turning on a sequel to The Dark Knight and the possibility of a new, albeit rebooted, Superman film, it seems that Nolan is the key player Warner Brothers has selected to mesh their cinematic comic characters together. Will Nolan's influence on other DC heroes be just what comic fans want to see, or is it a recipe for disaster?
Information courtesy of MTV and Slashfilm.com
MPP - The fact that he doesn't seem to be keen on drawing from the source material OR complimenting Batman's story with other mainstream DC characters never sat easy with me. I liked The Dark Knight a lot and it was a solid movie, but I think it lost some of the edge that made Batman Begins a great film; namely, venturing further away from being about a comic book character. What worries most is when he says,
"We did take the position philosophically — that superheroes simply don’t exist." Really? Because Superman is an older character than Batman. . .