It's hard to believe that 'The Dark Knight' is Christopher Nolan's sixth feature
Nolan, who directed 'The Dark Knight', has taken the Batman franchise to a whole new level. Prior to Nolan's stab at Batman, both Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher took the franchise in a somewhat dark yet often times more campy direction. Nolan, however, has elevated the film into more than a comic book adaptation. Under Nolan's guidance, 'The Dark Knight' could become an instant classic.
'Batman Begins' opened in 2005 and Nolan had many challenges to face when creating the sequel, 'The Dark Knight'. When creating the second installment, Nolan wanted to up the ante so to speak and spoke a lot about the gestation of the story and characters for this film
"I was interested very much by the idea of escalation; the idea of having established Batman as this heroic figure in Gotham. He's going to try and take Gotham back for the good people of the city…
"My interest is taking this story forward and seeing it expand out so that Batman's internal struggle from the first film takes on a citywide aspect. Batman exists in this very precarious state of somebody who has very negative impulses, but tries to channel them into something good. I think that is a very human dilemma, one that in this film we see infect more and more people and I think the Joker is very much the catalyst for that infection
For 'The Dark Knight', Nolan knew that he wanted to take the Batman character in a certain direction. Was Christian Bale, who plays the title character in both Batman Begins and now in the sequel, on the same page with Nolan when it came to where Nolan wanted to take the character?
"No, but I sorted him out," jokes Nolan. "We were very much on the same page. I think he was looking forward to the opportunity as I was with moving on with the character. The origin story of Batman is a very heavy story. It was an interesting one to take on, but it binds him to the past very much.
"We felt very much with this film we had to leave that behind and move forward and test him in different ways. I think what he is able to do in this film is come into this story with a great deal of confidence about being Batman… a feeling of being on top of his game and that gradually gets tested
What's interesting about this installment is at times Batman takes a back seat to the character of Harvey Dent, who for much of the film becomes the hero of the story. This idea gets tested as the story progresses.
"The way the story is constructed, we always imagined that Harvey Dent would form the emotional arc of the story. There is an all American heroic presence, but within that there is a seed of something else. There is an undercurrent of another layer, a bit of anger or a little bit of something in the way that he sees the world that could go one way or the other. There is a little bit of ambiguity.
"That was very important for Harvey because where that character goes; you don't want to cheat an audience. You don't want to set up a perfectly heroic presence. In other words, you have to show the audience right from the beginning there is more to this guy
In contrast to the character of Harvey Dent, the Joker becomes a character that does not change. He is a constant throughout the film.
"The purpose of the Joker for us was always that he has no arc, he has no development, he doesn't learn anything through the film. He is an absolute. He cuts through the film sort of like the shark in Jaws. He is a catalyst for action. People are reacting off and being affected by him…he is a character of pure anarchy, a desire to seek chaos, a desire to rip the world down around himself purely for his own amusement."
Though the story itself does not come directly from the comic, Nolan does utilize the source material when creating and fleshing out the story.
"There is a lot of detail that comes from the comics and a lot of characterization that comes from the comics, but not specific books. What we all try do, myself, and David Goyer and Jonah (Nolan), we try to be influenced by the whole history of the comics. Have a knowledge and a feel for it, try to be true to what I sort of term the kind of evolutionary history of the comic. You have sixty-five years of different writers and artists dealing with these characters. So there are certain commonalities, certain things that sustain over time. Really try to distill from the history of the comics, what the essence of those characters are and we try to be true to that
Keep an eye out for more from Christopher Nolan as well as the cast of 'The Dark Knight' here on Comics2Film and check out the film when it opens nationwide on July 18th
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