Batman has taken on many forms in the 60-some years that the comic book has been published. For a while, the 1960s TV series overshadowed any movie serial versions with its lavish colors and campy comic book effects. Tim Burton reinvented a dark version for film, only to be undone by the Joel Schumacher sequels.
Christopher Nolan decided to tell Batman's origin story from a fresh, modern perspective in "Batman Begins." His sequel, "The Dark Knight," grounds Batman and The Joker in a real world setting.
"I don't talk a lot about the previous films because I didn’t make them and they're not mine to talk about," Nolan said. "Certainly if you look at 'Batman Returns' with Danny DeVito as The Penguin, eating the fish and everything, they're coming it at from a surreal point of view. We try to ground it a little more in reality."
For DC Comics, the publisher of "Batman," any approach is fair game. "As I say though, there are different tones that can be taken with adapting this character to the movies," Nolan continued. "Indeed, in the comics, one of the things that Paul Levitz at DC Comics first talked about when I first came onboard for 'Batman Begins' is that Batman is a character who traditionally is interpreted in very different ways by the different artists and writers who've worked on it over the years. So there's a freedom and an expectation even that you will actually put something new into it, that it'll be interpreted in some different way."
Introducing The Joker into Nolan's Batman world raises as many questions about previous versions as "Batman Begins" raised about Bruce Wayne himself. Screenwriter David Goyer knew that one predecessor would overpower all others.
"I think that when we start talking about The Joker, obviously prior to this film The Joker that most people were familiar with was the Jack Nicholson Joker," said Goyer. "Although Cesar Romero when I was growing up was The Joker, it became immediately apparent that the Jack Nicholson version couldn't inhabit this world. He was from a total parallel universe so we had to do something different."
Co-writer Jonathan Nolan, Christopher's brother, helped tailor The Joker, who would be played by Heath Ledger in the film, to the new "Batman" universe.
"I always feel like we're approaching it from the sense of you have this Batman world and you have a different lens to look into," said Jonathan Nolan. "Chris's lens is through this idea of realism but to me the idea is to look consistent in the universe."
Ledger's passing means his final performance will have to speak for itself, although his costars love to exemplify his contributions to the character. Batman actor Christian Bale agrees that Ledger made The Joker his own.
"He has raised the bar, completely, with it," said Bale. "He was absolutely committed. I enjoyed working with him immensely. Clearly it is tragic that we are talking about this as his last complete performance. I would love it if he were to be walking in the room right now. He's great company. I looked forward to working with him many times in the future, I looked forward to being his friend for many years to come. But this movie can be a celebration of his talent, and he truly deserves that. He was a fierce talent and I was very fortunate to get to witness that talent and work with it and know the man during his lifetime."
The Joker is not the only popular "Batman" character to appear in "The Dark Knight." Harvey Dent, the tragic Gotham City D.A. who becomes the villain Two Face, is played by Aaron Eckhart. Previous Dents on screen have included Billy Dee Williams and Tommy Lee Jones.
"The interesting and more difficult thing about this was just finding the right tone for him," said Eckhart. "Frankly I didn't have a clue. In conjunction with the other characters in the movie, keeping the tone in the ballpark of the other characters, Batman and what Heath was doing with The Joker. Those were questions that I had for Chris because Chris has the whole thing in mind. I said, 'How is this? Is this where I need to be? Should I go bigger or should I go smaller?' So we did a lot of different variations and then Chris cut it the way he wanted to cut it."
The current movie timeline has even reinvented characters from its own franchise. Katie Holmes played Rachel Dawes in "Begins," but already Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over in "The Dark Knight."
"For me there were two chief worries," she said. "One was that I wanted to make sure that I had Katie Holmes' blessing and I didn't want to get involved with it if I didn't. I also wanted to make sure that Chris wanted the character to be smart and feisty and fierce and a real whole thinking woman who cares just as much about making Gotham an honorable and safe place to live as any of these guys did. When I realized that Chris wanted exactly that then I had to do it."
Rachel Dawes was a character original to the Batman universe. She had not appeared in comic books or previous movies. After securing Holmes' blessing, Gyllenhaal then made Rachel her own.
"I'm a fan of hers. I think she's a really lovely actress and I know her a tiny, tiny bit and I loved what she did in the previous movie, but I didn't think that it would help anybody for me to imitate her or even watch it too closely. I think it was better for me to think of her as a whole new woman. At the same time there are plot things and narrative things that she built that are important for this movie that follows. Most importantly I guess it was that she says at the very end of the first movie that she loves Bruce Wayne, but that she can't be with him if he's Batman and that she understands why he has to be Batman, but that she can't be with him that way."
"The Dark Knight" has just as many toys as previous "Batman" movies and TV shows. They are just employed as Batman confronts The Joker as a terrorist, not some comic book villain.
"I knew that Chris had proven his ideas in 'Batman Begins,' so I feel as though he was given more freedom to make exactly the movie that he wished to make for 'The Dark Knight,'" said Bale. "He can correct me on that if I'm wrong but that was my feeling. I know that with Chris, he's not going to bother making another movie if he doesn't feel like he can improve upon the first one. I went to his house, I sat and read the script and felt like he had really nailed just kind of exploding all of the clichés of genre movies. This was no longer an action movie. This was no longer a superhero movie. This was a movie that can stand shoulder to shoulder with any genre of movie. Of course, we have the resources and the ability to have the spectacle of the stunts and the explosions and all the excitement of that, but not have the compromise of great storytelling. These special effects and explosions, they don't mean crap if they're not in the context of a really great, substantial drama."
Now Batman has not only reinvented from the comic books, movies and television show. "The Dark Knight" steps up even from "Batman Begins."
"I think the big challenge really in doing a sequel is to build on what you've done in the first film, but not abandoned the characters, the logic, the tone of the world that you created for the first film," said Christopher Nolan. "So there are elements the audience will expect you to bring back that you need to bring back. You also have to balance that with the need to see something new and to see something different and that's been the challenge through the whole of making the film."
The screenwriters know their source material, so they took thematic cues from some of the series' darker artists. "One of the cool things about working in this property, in this franchise, comic books, movies, the Batman world is that you have all these amazing writers who sort of pick up the baton from the previous writer and carry it a little bit further," said Jonathan Nolan. "[Jeph] Loeb and [Tim] Sale picked up the baton from Frank Miller, dealing with Batman in this realistic setting, sort of naturalist setting, in which the criminal sort of underworld figured as a large component or a background against which the story plays out, which is enormously appealing, I think, to us."
Even though there are still special effects to enhance the visuals, the mandate for "The Dark Knight" was "real world." "The Gotham City that exists in these movies isn't realistic either," admitted Goyer. "I mean, every time you see a big wide establishing shot of Gotham City it's been augmented. But I think the approach on these movies is to try to depict Batman's story more realistically. That was something that Miller and Alan Moore and Jeff Loeb principally over the last couple of decades had been doing."
"The Dark Knight" opens Friday, July 18.
RoyJul 15th, 2008 - 17:04:55
Dude, great article, good read thanks.
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