Christopher Nolan Once Called Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ a ‘Mad Studio Film’
Batman has been interpreted by many filmmakers over the years. Tim Burton’s movies on the caped crusader have always been some of the most memorable. Christopher Nolan, who’d go on to make his own Batman films, was also a fan of Burton’s superhero flicks.
But Nolan asserted there were certain elements in the original Batman that he wouldn’t repeat in his own feature.
How Christopher Nolan made his Batman movies different than Tim Burton’s
Although they tackled the same character, Nolan wanted to go a different route than Burton did with Batman. Even though he was a fan of Burton’s vision.
“I think what Tim Burton did with Batman was absolutely extraordinary, but it was very idiosyncratic. It’s really kind of a mad studio film, really,” he said in a resurfaced interview with Ain’t It Cool News.
Nolan set out to ground the superhero in reality, as opposed to Burton’s more fantastical approach.
“If you look at what Tim Burton did, it’s specifically about a world that was created that Batman fits into,” Nolan once told Verbicide. “It’s this great gothic vision that’s very consistent, and consistent with the character of Batman. What I felt I hadn’t seen, especially in comics, was an ordinary world in which we could be living in Gotham. When a Gothamite sees Batman, he’s as extraordinary as he would be in our world.”
Doing an origin story that explored how Batman came to be helped Nolan achieve his goal.
“You have to start going, ‘Okay, why is he wearing this costume, and how did he get the costume, how does he and Alfred have this Batcave?’ We started to enjoy coming up with the answers to those questions. It became a fun part of our creative process; some of it became the candy of the movie,” he said.
‘Superman’ inspired Christopher Nolan’s ‘Batman Begins’
At the time, Nolan took lessons from another iconic superhero film when developing his first Batman movie Batman Begins. Nolan planned to start his own universe with a Batman in the beginning of his career, showing audiences how he became a superhero. It was an idea that was partially inspired by 1978’s Superman.
“I literally pitched the studio my take on Batman by saying I wanted to make the Batman film that had never been made in 1978 or 1979,” Nolan said.
The casting of the original Superman would greatly inspire Nolan’s own Batman Begins cast. Nolan decided to pair actor Christian Bale with veteran stars such as Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. This was not unlike what filmmaker Richard Donner did with Superman.
“Now all these superhero movies come out and they have these great casts, but when we did Batman Begins I was looking back at that movie. They had Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford and all these incredible actors around the principals. That’s how I got permission from the studio to cast up this comic book movie,” he said.
How Tim Burton felt about later Batman movies
Burton expressed great pride in being one of many filmmakers who helped bring beloved superheroes to cinema.
“It did feel very exciting to be at the beginning of all of it. It’s amazing how much it hasn’t really changed in a sense – the tortured superhero, weird costumes – but for me, at the time it was very exciting. It felt new,” Burton said not too long ago according to Deadline.
But he did notice the irony in the reaction his own Batman films used to receive when compared to more modern Batman flicks.
“The thing that is funny about it now is, people go ‘What do you think of the new Batman?’ and I start laughing and crying because I go back to a time capsule, where pretty much every day the studios were saying, ‘It’s too dark, it’s too dark’. Now it looks like a lighthearted romp,” he added.
