Nolan didn’t want The Dark Knight Rises: “The third film in the saga is never good, except maybe…”

In an excerpt from Tom Shawn’s book, Nolan VariationsChristopher Nolan talked about filming the third part of the Batman franchise, namely The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

“The third film in a saga is never good, except maybe Rocky III“- says the director, for whom the only third part of the franchise that is worthy is nothing but the third film of the Rocky saga. After finally deciding to give it a go, however, he changed course to avoid upsetting the audience.

“ very difficult. So my instinct was to switch genres. The first is an origin story. The second one is a crime drama that’s a lot like Heat, and the third one we have to blow up even more because you can’t cut it down. “, explain Christopher Nolan.

He adds: “The audience doesn’t give you a choice, but you also can’t go back and do what you did before. That’s why we have to change the gender. We chose the historical epic, disaster movie, The Towering Inferno Meets Doctor Zhivago.“

However, Nolan’s gamble seems to have paid off with the film grossing over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office and earning an AlloCiné audience rating of 4.3 out of 5.

Don’t you want the second one too?

Yes, according to his brother and collaborator Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan Nor did he want to make the second part of the saga, The Dark Knight, which is nevertheless widely considered the best of the trilogy – and the one that won Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar.

This was during a recent appearance on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast Jonathan Nolan talked about his brother’s reluctance to continue the saga after Batman began.

“Chris was hesitant to do another one“, found Jonathan Nolan In the period after the release of the first opus in 2005, we remind you that Christopher Nolan He immediately decided to shoot The Prestige, a year later in 2006, before a potential Batman sequel. “I think he didn’t want to be a superhero movie director” he added before suggesting that it was partly his insistence that convinced his brother to do another one.

“He was very proud of Batman Begins, but…to me it’s like we’ve built this incredible sports car and I’m like, ‘Let’s take this for a spin.’ Don’t you want to do another one?’“, he explained. “We spent an hour telling the original story, and it’s great, but we were like, “What can we do with this? Can we take the same characters and switch them to a slightly different genre? Can we go from an adventure movie to a crime movie to a mob movie and get that feeling?“

He continued: “So I was literally sitting with Charles Rowen and Chris and I said, “Dude, don’t be a coward. Let’s do it!’ I knew that the script – and he developed the story with David Goyer with a little input from me – was a bit like this: a detailed first act, a fairly detailed second act, a third act… er, there goes the ending! As soon as we finished the script, I thought, “This is going to be great. This is exciting. We have to make this movie.’ Finally, he changed his mind. He also managed to avoid being printed.“

You can watch The Dark Knight Trilogy in its entirety on Prime Video.

Also discover The Dark Knight Rises gaffes and minor mistakes in the video below: