7 Secrets Of The Dark Knight'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.