We knew there was a reason why we liked Christopher Nolan. Even before he got on the Batman merry go-round the director was a bright guy and an artist with integrity – whether they know it or not, this is why the geeks adore, “The Dark Knight” – cause there’s a truthfulness to it created by a masterclass filmmaker.
And Nolan is sticking to those smart filmmaking roots. Marvel may want to testosterone-up their franchises, with supergroup team-ups like “The Avengers,” but Nolan doesn’t want any of that nonsense and told the L.A. Times, in his Batman Universe, you’re not going to see Superman or any other D.C. Heroes. And thank god, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know other caped crusaders would put Batman in another place far from Nolan’s realistic and reality-centered world.
“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.”
Whew, great. That would cheese up the series and we’ll leave that to Marvel. So what’s up with Christopher Nolan-‘Batman 3’? Warner Bros. want him to make another one so bad they’re not pressuring him and giving him time to breathe. It’s a smart move, if they began crowding him, he’d surely bail.
“They’re being extremely gracious. I have a very good relationship with the studio. They know that I really needed to go on holiday and take some time to figure what I want to do next. They’ve been very respectful of that, which is terrific and one of the reasons I enjoy working with Warner Bros.”
Again, smart. Push him and he’ll jump ship. We’d love to see Nolan do one more Batman film, but after that it has to be move-on time and no that doesn’t mean another comic-book franchise film. He’s has to return to smaller filmmaking cause he excels at it. Films like “The Prestige” and “Memento,” are incredible and he needs to tell more rich stories in that vein.