The sets, the costumes, the action, all important elements to a film. However, none of these elements would be possible without a script. A good script is arguably the most important element with any film. Without a script, actors would have nothing to do or say and that certainly would make for quite a boring film. In the case of 'The Dark Knight', the writers David Goyer and Jonathan Nolan made sure there was plenty to do and say. With a run time of two and a half hours, they also wrote in enough action and high stakes to keep an audience glued to the screen.
Christopher Nolan, who directed the film, was very much the driving force in terms of how the Dark Knight unfolded. "Chris is great. The best experience I've had is working with Chris. It's a very open environment. We fight, we argue a lot, a lot," said Goyer. "He fosters that and it's let the best idea win. He's, well he's a benevolent dictator, that's what I would say. We fight, we scream and we say something is stupid."
Essentially the process began as Goyer and Nolan butted heads and came up with a story. Jonathan Nolan continues, "[Goyer is] a busy guy. You had to go off and direct. Then they handed it to me and gave me a crack at it. Chris is always going to take the last pass on his scripts going in. He's a writer as well as a director kind of 50/50. So he's always going to go in there and take the last crack at it. So our job is done well in advance of the film. So for us it's been this kind of fascinating experience of getting the work done and waiting a couple years to see what comes out the other end. It's been enormously satisfying this time."
Both Goyer and Nolan referenced several of the Batman stories when writing the film. "It's easier to say what didn't we reference, it felt like we read all of them," says Nolan. "I mean I grew up a Batman fan, David did too so there's a lot of that already in there. So when you embark on these things DC sends you everything."
Goyer continues saying, "Obviously there is some 'Long Halloween' in there, and there's some [Frank] Miller stuff. I think, less in this one, the Denny O'Neil stuff. Stuff from the 80's."
Nolan says, "We got mid-way through the process and went back and looked at the first appearance of the Joker in the books and found like wandered all the way back to it. There are some moments in Batman one, which are almost shot for shot moments that emerge in the film, which felt very gratifying to kind of reverse engineer to what felt like a starting point for the character."
In fact both Goyer and Nolan definitely did their homework. Goyer says, "The truth is we read every single Joker and Two-Face appearance from, well, all of them, hundreds of them."
With regards to the Joker both Goyer and Nolan were astonished by Heath Ledger's performance of that character. Goyer talks about the character of the Joker and Ledger's work in the film "The thing that I am the most excited about with regards to that character is I feel at least for me that [the Joker is] really been frightening. That's what I have been telling people, you are really going to be frightened, which I think is a testament to Heath."
The second film, in this journalist's humble opinion, is much stronger than the first, superior in fact. Are their rumblings of yet another Batman film and if so how do you top Dark Knight?
"As far as Chris goes we haven't had any conversations about it yet. It wasn't until about three or four months after 'Batman Begins' opened that Chris and I sat down and talked about another one. We'll have to see. It was a scary proposition to do Dark Knight and it's sort of geometrically proportionate proposition to do another one," Goyer says. "Both movies still feel complete. It's not like oh my God these things haven't been answered."
"That's the idea," says Nolan, "very much to make complete films."
Don't think for one second Nolan or Goyer are going to spill the beans on what villains they would tackle if they were to make another Batman film. Both respond to the question in unison, "We're not going to tell you."
All the same, don't look for them to simply rehash what's been done before.
"Batman has been published for seventy years," continues Goyer. "There are dozens if not hundreds of characters. Everyone says it's gotta be Penguin or Catwoman. I completely disagree."
"Yeah, there is a deep roster of characters," adds Nolan.
Before you start talking about a third Batman, make sure to check out the second installment, 'The Dark Knight', when it hits theaters on July 18th.
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