Chris Nolan: why I’ll make no more Batman films

With ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ out on DVD soon, director Christopher Nolan has been reflecting on his extraordinary Batman trilogy.

Talking to Film Comment, he ruled out ever returning to the franchise because he has finished exploring his interpretation of Batman.

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“For me, The Dark Knight Rises is specifically and definitely the end of the Batman story as I wanted to tell it,” he said. “The open-ended nature of the film is simply a very important thematic idea that we wanted to get into the movie, which is that Batman is a symbol. He can be anybody, and that was very important to us.

“Not every Batman fan will necessarily agree with that interpretation of the philosophy of the character, but for me it all comes back to the scene between Bruce Wayne and Alfred in the private jet in Batman Begins, where the only way that I could find to make a credible characterization of a guy transforming himself into Batman is if it was as a necessary symbol, and he saw himself as a catalyst for change.

“Therefore it was a temporary process, maybe a five-year plan that would be enforced for symbolically encouraging the good of Gotham to take back their city. To me, for that mission to succeed, it has to end, so this is the ending for me, and as I say, the open-ended elements are all to do with the thematic idea that Batman was not important as a man, he’s more than that. He’s a symbol, and the symbol lives on.”

Another interesting nugget from the interview was how Nolan saw the trilogy’s villains.

“If you look at the three of them," he said. "Ra’s Al Ghul is almost a religious figure, The Joker is the anti-religious figure, the anti-structure anarchist. And then Bane comes in as a military dictator. And military dictators can be ideologically based, they can be religiously based, or a combination thereof.”

He added: “With my co-writers David Goyer and my brother [Jonathan Nolan], we decided early on that the greatest villains in movies, the people who most get under our skin, are the people who speak the truth. So with Ra’s Al Ghul, we wanted everything he said to be true in some way. So, he’s looking at the world from a very honest perspective that he truly believes. And we applied the same thing to The Joker and Bane in the third one. Everything they say is sincere. And in terms of their ideology, it’s really about ends justifying means. “

Nolan’s Bat-trilogy made more than £1.7 billion at the box office, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews.