All too often, franchise filmmaking can get lazy, produce disappointing sequels, and entirely place its faith in a formula established by its previous entries. It doesn't put in the work in order to surprise audiences every time with something distinctive enough in its own right.
Christopher Nolan worked on The Dark Knight trilogy in a rather unique way over the span of a decade. He built a take on the character in Batman Begins that was both critically acclaimed and loved by a very large audience, and then he understood the promise that comes with having a winning formula as well as its pitfalls. We’ll take a look at how, when it comes to franchise filmmaking — which is a loaded and tricky domain of filmmaking that attracts its fair share of criticism when it’s defined by its excesses — Christopher Nolan showed the way.
The Promise and Pitfalls of Formula
Having a formula isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A formula is something that has worked. It’s the token of a relationship an audience has built with a story and its characters. It’s the promise of an interested, eager, and returning audience. When you’ve built a formula, you hold between your hands an audience’s trust. It’s a starting point.
It’s a starting point because what a director then does with that trust is essential. A director can get arrogant and lazily assume that this trust doesn’t need to be continuously nourished. Or instead, they can build on that precious trust they hold, and correctly discern that their audience doesn’t want to see multiple retreads of the same story and characters. Rather, it wants to see the same story and characters expanded and developed in new, interesting, and thrillingly strange directions. There’s a difference there. An audience wants to see the characters to which it's gotten attached tested differently, their fictional world enriched, and the stakes they deal with renewed. Christopher Nolan understood this very well.
The Christopher Nolan Model of Filmmaking
Between 2003 and 2012, Nolan worked on his trilogy. In between installments, he also worked on two other projects: The Prestige and Inception. How did he so successfully create a franchise that wasn’t directly adapted from a book trilogy?
One deceptively simple answer is that it wasn't planned as a trilogy at all. When he worked on Batman Begins, he wanted to tell a complete story and had no idea if something would follow. "That’s something that Chris always would talk about,” says Christian Bale. "He’d say, 'This is it. We’re making one film. That’s all we’ve got.'"
The ending of Batman Begins didn't need a follow-up. It ended in a way that sounded like it was saying: "And that's how Batman came to be, and he'll have a lot of work on his hands." That could have been it. The Dark Knight ended on a gloriously somber note about heroism that didn't necessarily demand any follow-up either.
Only when one film was finished and Nolan, with his screenwriting team, felt he had enough new storytelling ideas for a whole new movie did he embark on a sequel. He was skeptical on each occasion and took his time, working on an entirely different project in the meantime, before committing to the next installment. It’s why his three Batman movies feel fresh.
Batman Begins was a story of personal pain transformed into idealism, which was pitted against Ra’s Al Ghul, a believer in much more drastic measures. The Dark Knight was an entirely different story about that idealism getting tested by terrorist forces. The Dark Knight Rises was about the fallout that ensued from the “ends justify the means” mentality previously used to counter terrorism. In each sequel, the villain represents the devil that could be awakened by Batman’s previous choices.
The third time, Nolan decided beforehand that it would definitively be his last chapter, and that he wouldn't "become overindulgent." The story had reached its point of balance. He stuck to his promise, even though there was every financial incentive not to.
Know When to Pass on the Torch & What's Next
If Nolan hadn't stuck to the promise mentioned above, the series might have ended up becoming like many other franchises that echo the worst types of TV series, stretching and stretching increasingly thin and creatively bankrupt material. J.R.R. Tolkien had an appropriate expression for this idea when he described in The Lord of the Rings a life extended beyond its natural lifespan: it was “like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.”
Like his Caped Crusader, Nolan knew when to stop. At the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne hands over the idea and symbol of Batman that was born from the bowels of Gotham back to that city, to whoever might see fit to follow in his footsteps, before he becomes too personally attached to it negatively. His sacrifice is his personal detachment from the mask, once he feels he’s contributed everything he could to it, and before it’s spoiled.
Like Bruce, Nolan has moved on and left an iconic monument of cinema that, unlike many other franchises, ended on a strong note. Now, a decade later, director Matt Reeves has decided to take on the character. We’ll find out very soon if it will be a worthy successor, but it bodes well that Reeves has reportedly fought to make it a standalone story, and that he's said: “I don't want to be part of a long line of Batman movies where this is just another one. I feel like they've been really distinctive.”
Reeves's The Batman stars Robert Pattinson and will be in theaters on March 4, 2022.