15 Crazy Facts You Just Have To Accept To Enjoy The Dark Knight Trilogy

14. They've Ruined All The Other Batman Movies

A by-product of Nolan's movies being so commercially and artistically successful is that they've made going back and watching the previous Batman movies a real challenge. Nolan's trilogy feels like such a perfectly gritty adaptation of the comic that watching the original 1960s series is now a rather peculiar, even painful experience, and Tim Burton's Gothic stylings just don't really measure up either. As for Joel Schumacher's more campy Batman movies, he did a pretty fine job ruining them all by himself. The best approach is clearly to view the other Batman films on their own terms (because Burton's films really are pretty great), but it's not easy when Nolan has steamrolled all the previous films in pretty much every way he could ever want to. Some might prefer the sillier approach of what came before, but this is a distinct minority: for most, Nolan's darker take is the authoritative cinematic interpretation of The Caped Crusader. Additionally, though Ben Affleck's Batman will follow along similar lines tonally, it's going to inevitably be compared (probably unfavourably) to what Nolan and Christian Bale pulled off. The healthy thing to do is to enjoy the TDK films on their own, separate merits and do the same for the other Batman movies: if you're constantly comparing them to Nolan, it's always going to leave a sour taste.