Christopher Nolan Didn’t Want To Make The Dark Knight

Batman is one of the most iconic superheroes of all time. His grounded nature and mystique have drawn millions of fans to the character over the years. Hence, Warner Bros. have taken advantage of this property with several adaptions of the character from various filmmakers with each one trying to put their own creative spin on the character.

After the critically maligned Batman & Robin, the franchise bounced back thanks to Christopher Nolan’s rendition of the iconic superhero. His dark and gritty take on Batman resulted in Batman Begins becoming a success.

However, it was his follow-up, The Dark Knight that really broke records and quickly became one of the greatest Batman movies of all time. The movie became a worldwide phenomenon due to the definitive depictions of Batman and the Joker. Although Christopher Nolan completed his trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises, for a brief moment, the second film in the trilogy almost never took place.

In his upcoming book Christopher Nolan: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work, author Ian Nathan discussed how Christopher Nolan planned to step away after the first movie. However, Christopher Nolan and his brother were surprised by the response the first movie received and were coaxed by Warner Bros. into doing a follow-up film.

“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.'”

If Christopher Nolan had stuck to his guns, then we probably wouldn’t have gotten a film as iconic as The Dark Knight. It’s great the Christopher Nolan returned to the Batman franchise with The Dark Knight as no one would’ve been able to carry forward the tone and themes that he set.

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