Christopher Nolan Credits Richard Donner’s ‘Superman’ For The ‘Batman’ Trilogy


Hot off the release of Interstellar, director Christopher Nolan recently gave an interview to the Hollywood Reporter. In the interview, Nolan talked about the huge influence that Richard Donner’s Superman film had on him.

Christopher first talked about how the Batman project came to him.

“It came to me in a very interesting way, which was my agent, Dan Aloni, called and said, ‘It seems unlikely you’d be interested in this, but Warners is sort of casting around for what they would do with Batman.’ It had reached the end of its last sort of life, if you’d like. And at the time, nobody used the term ‘reboot’ — that didn’t exist — so it was really a question of, ‘What would you do with this?'”

Nolan went on to say that he was ultimately interested in doing Batman because of Richard Donner’s Superman.

“…one of the great films that I am very influenced by that we haven’t talked about was Dick Donner’s ‘Superman’ — 1978, that came out. It made a huge impression on me. I can remember the trailers for it, I can remember about ‘Superman’ the movie, all of that.”

Christopher said that he admired Donner’s Superman in contrast to Tim Burton’s version of Batman.

“…it was very clear to me that however brilliant – and it was very brilliant – Tim Burton’s take on ‘Batman’ was in 1989, and it was obviously a worldwide smash, it wasn’t that sort of origin story, it wasn’t that real-world kind of epic movie; it was very Tim Burton, a very idiosyncratic, gothic kind of masterpiece. But it left this interesting gap in pop-culture, which is you know, you had ‘Superman’ in 1978, but they never did the sort of 1978 ‘Batman,’ where you see the origin story.”

The difference between the two, Nolan expounded, was that Superman was the story of a superhero in the real world, whereas Burton’s Batman existed in a very Burton-esque world.

“…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… 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.”

It’s clear that Christopher Nolan’s version of amazing heroes in a realistic world has become the norm in all superhero movies, including those from Marvel.

[Image via Batman-News]

Share this article: Christopher Nolan Credits Richard Donner’s ‘Superman’ For The ‘Batman’ Trilogy
More from Inquisitr