7 Secrets Of The Dark Knight's Success

By Cathal Gunning / April 21, 2020

A decade and a half after it began with 2005’s Batman Begins and almost a decade since its final cinematic appearance, 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, the legacy of Memento director Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy still looms large over the ever-growing world of superhero cinema.

Even after over two dozen outings for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a stream of DCEU films hot on their heels, Nolan’s work with the Caped Crusader has not only maintained relevance but has managed to remain the high standard to which all subsequent multi-million dollar spandex and stunt work superhero spectacles are held.

So what did the Inception director get right, and how did his this series manage to blow the preceding already-impressive Burton/ Schumacher Batman films out of the water to make the definitive cinematic portrayal of Gotham’s finest?

Today we’re taking a look at which stars aligned for the Insterstellar helmer, which elements of the films were perfectly planned, and how this intersection of luck and skill left us with one of the most enduringly acclaimed blockbuster series of all time as we uncover the seven secrets to the Dark Knight Trilogy’s success.

7. Not-So-Super Sources Of Inspiration

When Batman Begins hit cinemas in summer 2005, something about this blockbuster felt… different.

Yes, it had the same big budget and starry cast as earlier Tim Burton efforts involving Gotham’s caped crusader, and the flick was filled with the sort of ambitious ‘runaway train threatens an entire city’s safety’ action set pieces and bruising martial arts action that would be at home in any number of earlier superhero films. But for all its blockbuster trappings, the film felt fresh, with a dark and serious tone.

It’s a difficult task for a film centred around a masked billionaire playboy dressing as a bat and fighting crime with his gadgets to find a tone closer to Scorsese or David Fincher than Adam West’s infamous series. But the then-little known helmer managed this feat even more impressively in the second film of the series, and Nolan admitted that this success came from borrowing inspiration not from comics, but rather from Manhunter helmer Michael Mann’s 1995 cop thriller Heat.

The director wanted a believable tale of criminals and lawmakers locked in an existential struggle, and studying Heat's city-wide story of cops and robbers gave the film its trademark gravitas as epitomised in the iconic interrogation scene, which owes it existence to the more subdued but no less tense stand-off between de Niro and Pacino in Mann’s film.