Christopher Nolan: My Batman movies happened before superhero films became “a machine”

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies have endured even as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has redefined what a superhero movie is. The director looks back:

The Dark Knight trilogy — consisting of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises — is right up there with the most beloved superhero series of all time. It’s now been eight years it came to a close and 15 since it began, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe rising to prominence in the meantime. Why has the Dark Knight trilogy endured?

Director Christopher Nolan offered some thoughts while promoting Tom Shore’s new book The Nolan Variations to 92Y. “It was the right moment in time for the telling of the story I wanted to do,” he explained.

"The origin story for Batman had never been addressed in film or fully in the comics. There wasn’t a particular or exact thing we had to follow. There was a gap in movie history. Superman had a very definitive telling with Christopher Reeve and Richard Donner. The version of that with Batman had never been told. We were looking at this telling of an extraordinary figure in an ordinary world."

He’s right. In Tim Burton’s 1989 movie, Batman, and its sequels, the character was an established vigilante from the beginning. Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy changed that completely.

“The other advantage we had was back then you could take more time between sequels,” Nolan continued. “When we did Batman Begins, we didn’t know we’d do one and it took three years to do it and then four years before the next one. We had the luxury of time. It didn’t feel like a machine, an engine of commerce for the studio. As the genre becomes so successful, those pressures become greater and greater. It was the right time.”

For the record, Batman Begins came out in 2005, three years before Iron Man kicked off the MCU. (The Dark Knight also came out in 2008.) So while The Dark Knight trilogy overlapped with the rise of the MCU, which is an “engine of commerce” if there ever was one, it wasn’t really influenced by it.

The modern superhero movie definitely looks very different than it did when Nolan started out. His Batman trilogy was very self-contained, while now, pretty much every superhero movie Marvel or Warner Bros. puts out acts as a bridge to the next one.

Be sure to read Tom Shone’s new book The Nolan Variations if you want to learn more about the director’s work!

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h/t IndieWire