Tag: Michael Cain

Christopher Nolan Bids Farewell To Batman

by Shawn Madden

Nolan gave a heartfelt adieu to the characters and events that have inhabited his Gotham in a foreword for The Art And Making Of The Dark Knight Trilogy. Thanks to a member of the SuperHeroHype forums we have it to share with you.

Alfred. Gordon. Lucius. Bruce . . . Wayne. Names that have come to mean so much to me. Today, I’m three weeks from saying a final good-bye to these characters and their world. It’s my son’s ninth birthday. He was born as the Tumbler was being glued together in my garage from random parts of model kits. Much time, many changes. A shift from sets where some gunplay or a helicopter were extraordinary events to working days where crowds of extras, building demolitions, or mayhem thousands of feet in the air have become familiar.

People ask if we’d always planned a trilogy. This is like being asked whether you had planned on growing up, getting married, having kids. The answer is complicated. When David and I first started cracking open Bruce’s story, we flirted with what might come after, then backed away, not wanting to look too deep into the future. I didn’t want to know everything that Bruce couldn’t; I wanted to live it with him. I told David and Jonah to put everything they knew into each film as we made it. The entire cast and crew put all they had into the first film. Nothing held back. Nothing saved for next time. They built an entire city. Then Christian and Michael and Gary and Morgan and Liam and Cillian started living in it. Christian bit off a big chunk of Bruce Wayne’s life and made it utterly compelling. He took us into a pop icon’s mind and never let us notice for an instant the fanciful nature of Bruce’s methods.

I never thought we’d do a second — how many good sequels are there? Why roll those dice? But once I knew where it would take Bruce, and when I started to see glimpses of the antagonist, it became essential. We re-assembled the team and went back to Gotham. It had changed in three years. Bigger. More real. More modern. And a new force of chaos was coming to the fore. The ultimate scary clown, as brought to terrifying life by Heath. We’d held nothing back, but there were things we hadn’t been able to do the first time out — a Batsuit with a flexible neck, shooting on Imax. And things we’d chickened out on — destroying the Batmobile, burning up the villain’s blood money to show a complete disregard for conventional motivation. We took the supposed security of a sequel as license to throw caution to the wind and headed for the darkest corners of Gotham.

I never thought we’d do a third — are there any great second sequels? But I kept wondering about the end of Bruce’s journey, and once David and I discovered it, I had to see it for myself. We had come back to what we had barely dared whisper about in those first days in my garage. We had been making a trilogy. I called everyone back together for another tour of Gotham. Four years later, it was still there. It even seemed a little cleaner, a little more polished. Wayne Manor had been rebuilt. Familiar faces were back — a little older, a little wiser . . . but not all was as it seemed.

Gotham was rotting away at its foundations. A new evil bubbling up from beneath. Bruce had thought Batman was not needed anymore, but Bruce was wrong, just as I had been wrong. The Batman had to come back. I suppose he always will.

Michael, Morgan, Gary, Cillian, Liam, Heath, Christian . . . Bale. Names that have come to mean so much to me. My time in Gotham, looking after one of the greatest and most enduring figures in pop culture, has been the most challenging and rewarding experience a filmmaker could hope for. I will miss the Batman. I like to think that he’ll miss me, but he’s never been particularly sentimental.

It’s been said numerous times but whoever has to follow up after Nolan really has his work cut out for him. There are few directors that I have seen with the level of passion that Nolan has for his work. While I and many others are sad we will never get a Nolan directed Bat-flick I eagerly await what he has coming next.

A Look Back At ‘Batman Begins’ And ‘The Dark Knight’

by Shawn Madden

The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters tomorrow at midnight and I thought I would take a look at Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. There is no doubt that this trilogy will go down as one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time. A main factor in this being the common theme that Christopher Nolan has always set as the heart of the stories. Rather than focusing on Batman as the superhero he focused on the man who was Batman and the symbol he created. Something that film makers that had come before failed to truly capture. As stated in Batman Begins:

People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol — as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting. – Bruce Wayne (Batman Begins)

Ever since Batman Begins hit screens movies have began taking a more realistic approach to their characters thus making them more relatable. By making a story more believable you can lose yourself in it. Batman Begins took a risk by actually being the first Batman film to be actually about Batman. The film was not about the villains who took a back seat to the exploration of Bruce Wayne’s psyche. But what really made this movie had to be the casting. Christian Bale is by far the best Bruce Wayne to date and with a supporting cast that was flawless and made this first piece to the story truly memorable and a movie that improves over time rather than one that deteriorates. We were introduced to a new Gotham unlike the ones we had seen in the past and a Bruce Wayne unlike the ones we had seen in the past. This character was real. That was the difference here. One of the most memorable scenes in being a great ending scene that would lead into one of the greatest sequels ever made.

“Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” – Alfred Pennyworth (The Dark Knight)

A line from The Dark Knight that to this day is still one of the most memorable. This movie truly set the bar for comic book films if not films in general. A movie that received criticism from the masses of the internet for its casting of Heath Ledger as Batman’s greatest villain of all time…The Joker. I remember clearly reading on an internet board the numerous randoms who referred to this move as “the worst casting decision ever made” and jokes about this actors role from Brokeback Mountain that even referred to this sequel as being “Broke-Bat Mountain”. And this once again proves just how wrong we all can be. If we thought the casting in Batman Begins was brilliant we hadn’t seen anything yet.

Nolan had made his masterpiece with The Dark Knight. It was dark, intelligent, incredibly exciting and cinematically rich, while remaining utterly true to the soul of its source material. The actors were at their finest here and truly gripping performances sucked us in to a movie that will go down as one of the greatest films ever made in my opinion. Not just because it is a comic book movie but because it is a fantastic film. The bitter-sweet tragedy here is that this was Heath Ledgers finest performance but sadly his last. If any actor deserved to win the Oscar for “Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role” in 2009 it was Heath Ledger. However the movie otherwise was snubbed at the Oscars and is now why they have expanded how many movies are nominated from five to ten. The midnight screening that I attended received a standing ovation for a film that honestly deserved it but at the same time left fans sad that we would never see Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker grace the screen again.

So now we approach the grand finale to the Dark Knight Trilogy. Tomorrow at midnight The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters and is already receiving praise from many. Once again some have been skeptical to casting but if history has taught us anything it is that we should have faith in Christopher Nolan here because he has not let us down before.

“If anything, it’s a tremendous responsibility and opportunity to sort of follow in the footsteps of somebody who was so brilliant. So I’m just grateful to be part of the family, actually, the Batman, Chris Nolan family. And that I got brought in to be the villain in this film.” – Tom Hardy on Heath Ledger

The Joker may be Batman’s arch-nemesis but Bane is one of the greatest enemies he has ever faced. Known best as the man who “broke the bat” we are truly in store for a completely different type of animal here. Bane is not only one of Batman’s greatest enemies physically but mentally. Tom Hardy has had his performance referred to as “powerful” and that “his simple presence intimidates anyone”. Do not compare his performance to Heath but instead remember that he is playing a completely different character and a new threat that we have not seen before. Many who have already seen the film have called this Christian Bale’s finest performance of the three and a fantastic end to the story that Nolan has set out to tell. While The Dark Knight may be a tough act to follow I have complete faith myself that we will be getting the film that we all need and deserve. There has been much talk that this could be the first comic book movie to win an Oscar and it seems quite possible that it can. Have we seen all that Nolan and company have to give?

Not everything. Not yet. – Batman (The Dark Knight Rises)

A look back at the trilogy: