Batman News

Considering the current plight of Hollywood pumping out crap as much as a cow farm I am feeling hopeful with the news of Christopher Nolan dropping out of production for The Prisoner and is heading back to direct the third Batman movie. Although nothing is official I remind encouraged.

What I find baffling is how other studios have not learned their lesson from The Dark Knight. I recently heard that Warner Brothers wants to make a new Superman movie in the “dark” genre or at least “as dark as the character will allow.” The success of The Dark Knight was not merely in the fact that it was “dark.” Although that was helpful, the real success of the blockbuster hit was due to the fact that it had a great storyline, character development, and several psychological layers dealing with sociological issues both individually and collectively.

Christopher Nolan says that he does not want to come back and do a third Batman movie unless there is a story worth telling. Did you hear that? “A STORY WORTH TELLING!” He’s not concerned with how much darker they can make Batman or what kind of new special effects would be pleasing to the eyes. It is about the story for Nolan. The freakin’ story!! It seems so simple that making a movie is about a good story, but more often than not, Hollywood wants to sell people on the name brand or the CGI instead of developing something that has any amount of depth to it (I’m looking at you G.I. Joe).

You may or may not have liked The Dark Knight. However, it cannot be denied that the complexity of the characters and the storyline with its underlying philosophical issues intertwined throughout it took the genre of comic book movies into an entirely different place. I wrote this last year after The Dark Knight came out. I’m done with Michael Bay feeding us CGI crap in Transformers 2 and the cheese that is G.I. Joe who actually cast Marion Wayans.

When Paramount Pictures announced that they were going to do a live-action movie of G.I. Joe, I thought it might be interesting. Once they cast Marion Wayans, however, it was like saying to me: “We are going to make a movie about the beloved toys that you, and almost every little boy, grew up with and not take the creation of it seriously whatsoever. In fact, we are going to run it through mud so that you are left with zero happy childhood memories.” Thanks Paramount. What did I ever do to you? I might as well go to the zoo and have monkeys throw their own feces at me, which would have been the appropriate equivalent of seeing that film.


I didn’t know much about Nolan before the Batman reboot. The DVD extras for both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were amazing. I heard Nolan’s rationale behind everything he did in the movies and it made me appreciate his creativity all the more. Developing multiple psychological layers, quality character development, dealing with conflicting worldviews, and probing the heart and mind of the human soul were all the things thought impossible when it came to comic book movies. Nolan made it possible, and for the life of me I don’t know why other directors don’t take that idea, apply it to another comic book character, and put their own unique style on it.

In short, it has been a long time since I have looked forward to a movie that will be well made and has some level of depth to it, and sadly, the wait continues.