The Dark Knight is arguably one of the best Batman movies to grace the big screen, but according to a new book about director Christopher Nolan, the film was never part of his plan. As revealed by Slash Film in an excerpt from Ian Nathan’s book Christopher Nolan: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work, Nolan only ever planned to make one Batman movie and then step away from what ended up being a whole trilogy starring Christian Bale in the titular role.
Batman Begins rebooted the DC franchise almost a decade after Batman & Robin brought the first big screen run of Dark Knight movies to a poorly received end. While the movie ended with a tease of a sequel, it seems that Christopher Nolan didn’t really plan on following up on it, but things didn’t turn out as expected. The excerpt revealed:
“For once, it was a trick he pulled on himself. The playing card that Gary Oldman's stalwart police officer James Gordon reveals in a Ziploc at the end of Batman Begins – the Joker, naturally – was intended as a tingle of anticipation and possibility to send the audience home with, no more than that. Christopher Nolan had no intention of maintaining a franchise; he had done his superhero bit, bringing Batman back from his decline into camp, and wanted to be away to pursue more personal, original material. This was only a tease, or at best a departing offering to the studio – the enticing question of what a revamped (as far as fans were concerned, a Nolanized) Joker might resemble. 'We wanted to suggest possibilities for how the story would continue,' he claimed, 'not because we were going to make a sequel.'”
What If The Dark Knight Hadn’t Been Made?
Batman Begins was a decent rebirth for the iconic DC hero. A gritty, real-world Batman in a Gotham city full of dark and dangerous criminals rather than a bunch of brightly colored, gimmicky comic-book characters spouting one-liners. However, while Liam Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul, Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow and Tom Wilkinson's Carmine Falcone were decent enough villains for any Batman movie to have on board, they paled in comparison to the arrival of Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.
The sequel may not have been planned by Nolan, but it delivered a tour de force. The Oscar-winning performance by Ledger, almost tripled the gross of Batman Begins to become the first Batman movie to take over $1 billion at the box office, and led to The Dark Knight Rises, which remains the highest-grossing Batman movie to date. Sometimes, it seems that things can just work out in ways that cannot be anticipated, and while movie sequels are almost expected with any big property, Nolan’s intention to make just one movie and step aside proves that the filmmakers behind some of the most highly regarded sequels in cinematic history aren’t always on board with the idea of becoming embroiled in a substantial commitment to one multi-movie project without a little coaxing.