Christopher Nolan Modeled Batman Begins After One Of The Greatest Superman Movies Ever Made

When Joel Schumacher's "Batman & Robin" alienated mainstream audiences and comic book fans alike by reveling in a garish degree of camp that made the 1960s "Batman" series look like Netflix's "Daredevil," Warner Bros. knew a course correction was in order. The fourth film in the Caped Crusader franchise, launched by Tim Burton's 1989 game-changing "Batman," grossed almost $100 million less worldwide than the previous installment, "Batman Forever," which forced the studio to slam on the brakes and brainstorm a new path for one of its most valuable properties.

There were several false starts along the way (including a take on "Batman vs. Superman" written by "Se7en" scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, as well as an adaptation of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's limited comic book series "Batman: Year One" from Darren Aronofsky), but the studio finally found its man in Christopher Nolan. The "Memento" director had deeply impressed WB with his hit remake of the Norwegian thriller "Insomnia;" it believed the filmmaker had the right skills and temperament to get the Batmobile off blocks.

While Nolan's agent didn't think the filmmaker would have any interest in making a superhero movie, Nolan actually took a meeting with WB to explain what his Batman would look like. It was a very simple pitch: He wanted to make a "Batman" movie in the mold of Richard Donner's "Superman." If you're thinking Nolan's dark, brooding trilogy feels nothing like Donner's bright, uplifting 1978 film, Nolan, in a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, stressed that it was more about employing a practical aesthetic. He wanted moviegoers to believe Batman could exist in the real world.

As Nolan told THR, "[Y]ou had 'Superman' in 1978, but they never did the sort of 1978 'Batman,' where you see the origin story, where the world is pretty much the world we live in, but there's this extraordinary figure there, which is what worked so well in Dick Donner's 'Superman' film." He then added, "It was more a thing of, 'Nobody's ever made this origin story in this way and treated it as a piece of action filmmaking, a sort of contemporary action blockbuster.'"

Nolan certainly achieved this by shooting real exteriors in Chicago, London, and New York City, which, when blended with his gritty-looking city street sets, brought Gotham City to life as a believably gray and grimy metropolis. Nolan called this look "heightened realism," and he again cited Donner's film as a major influence in his approach:

"What I loved about 'Superman' was the way New York felt like New York, or rather Metropolis felt like New York. Metropolis felt like a city you could recognize — and then there was this guy flying through the streets. 'That's amazing, so let's do that for Batman, and let's start by putting together an amazing cast,' which is what they had done with that film, but which I hadn't seen done since — they had everybody from [Marlon Brando] to Glenn Ford, playing Superman's dad, you know, it was an incredible cast."

Nolan came through in a big way here by casting the heavyweight thespian likes of Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, and Tom Wilkinson. It conveyed a level of prestige to "Batman Begins" that the vast majority of superhero films never even try to achieve. Nolan's Batman is, for now, the definitive movie Batman, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.