Why Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins Was Designed As A Solo Movie, Not A Trilogy Starter

Although Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are widely referred to as the Dark Knight Trilogy, Nolan himself shot each film individually. When asked in a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter if he knew he was “signing up for multiple movies” when he agreed to produce 2005’s “Batman Begins,” Nolan replied, “No, not at all. I only had a deal to do one movie.” He continued:

“Personally, we started to put together a vague idea of ​​where the second and third movie was going to go, and then I shot them on the spot. I said, ‘You know what?’ You have to put everything into one movie and just try to make a great movie because you might not get that opportunity again.” […] And then, when it worked, we were able to think: OK, what are we going to do in the sequel?

“Batman Begins” is almost entirely self-contained, except for one brief scene at the end where the Joker’s appearance teases the follow-up. The film’s final act is perhaps the biggest indicator of this: not only has half of Gotham City been bathed in a toxic fog that causes intense hallucinations, but Bruce Wayne himself (Christian Bale) crashes a subway train into a building, causing an untold amount of property damage.

This is a stark contrast to, say, the Tom Holland-led “Spider-Man” trilogy, which deliberately kept the stakes low with 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and then ratcheted them up through the sequels. “Homecoming” also saves the romance between the web-slinger Dutch and his love interest MJ (Zendaya) for the next film, while “Batman Begins” fully explores Bruce’s relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes). In other words, “Homecoming” is playing the long game, but “Batman Begins” is only interested in being a standalone saga.

Nolan admitted to THR that he felt some pressure to make “Batman Begins” the intentional start of the trilogy because that’s what everyone seemed to be doing at the time. “Everyone thought about trilogies, which I think they probably don’t think about anymore because they split the third movie into two parts,” he noted. But at the time, “The Matrix” [directors] They were doing sequels, and it was all about trilogies, “What’s a trilogy?!” We didn’t want to answer that question.”

The “split the third movie into two” trend in the 2000s was most notable with “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions”, which were filmed back-to-back after the first “Matrix” movie (a standalone film released in 1999) became a huge hit. Then, around the time Batman Begins went into production, Disney did the same thing with its first two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. Both the initial “Matrix” and “Pirates” trilogies had the same response: audiences unanimously loved the first entry, criticized the sequel for feeling too much like the setup, and took the third act seriously for being too chaotic and complicated.

The Dark Knight trilogy avoided this problem. 2008’s “The Dark Knight” isn’t the first half of a giant movie, but it’s definitely a jam-packed adventure that wraps everything up in a nice little bow. The film’s closing moments — in which Batman evades the police after being taken down for the crimes of Gotham District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) after turning into Two-Face — have long been viewed by some fans as a suspenseful adventure, but they also work well as a depressing conclusion to a standalone story. There’s a running theme of chaos versus order throughout the film, so it’s only fitting that Batman saves the day by destroying his reputation.

Another major attraction of the Dark Knight trilogy is that Nolan never felt rushed in making each film. After “Batman Begins,” he took a break to direct “The Prestige,” a historical sci-fi thriller about overly competitive wizards. Then, after The Dark Knight, he went and produced Inception, an original sci-fi film centered around the idea of ​​entering people’s dreams. There was a three-year and then four-year gap between Nolan’s Batman films, which made each one of them (especially 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises) feel like a fitting event.

These breaks also resulted in each of the three films feeling different in tone, thematic materials, and even color hues. There is a clear evolution in his directorial style as well, with Nolan gradually moving away from quick close-ups and instead adopting longer, wider shots. You get a real feeling when watching these films, seeing a director grow in confidence and maturity, a feeling that would not have been as noticeable if the three films had been made in quick succession.

For Nolan, giving himself time to breathe between Batman films is a big part of what helped them work so well. As he told THR:

“If you’re really trying to grow and nurture a series… you need time. And that doesn’t necessarily mean working full-time on it; it means time to put some ideas together and then let them sit and go off and do something else, and then come back and see what still feels right and everything. Ironically, I think it was very helpful to create a cohesive trilogy, because you were able to really get an idea of ​​what each film became for the audience before you then moved the story forward.”