In our exclusive interview with The Dark Knight Rises producer Emma Thomas in SFX #224, on sale 27 June, she states that director Christopher could never be persuaded to return to Batman.
“No. Never,” she replies emphatically when asked.
Is that never or is that never say never again, SFX persists?
“No, that’s truly a never. I cannot imagine a world in which he would ever want to come back. At a certain point it’s fun to go off and do something different, you know. We’ve spent almost 10 years of our lives making Batman films. He was very excited about this film, and the story that he’d come up with, but I just cannot imagine that he would get that excited about another version of the same thing. The great thing about a trilogy is that it feels like you’ve got a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s like an extended version of a regular film. Once you get into a fourth film then it’s just episodic, and I just can’t see him getting excited about making another film where basically you’re just wheeling in different villains.”
Hustler wrote:I loved Jonah's answer in SciFi Magazine when asked if he was concerned about the plot being too cluttered due to so many characters:
Oh, I don't believe in any of that s**t! Everyone is always looking for excuses as to why something worked or why something didn't work. Even The Dark Knight has three villains in it, or six, depending on how you're counting them. It is just a question of whether you can pull it off. That's what it comes down to. I think a narrative is only as cluttered as you let it be. And if you're looking for scope and scale, you brought up The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Consider the number of characters in that. The number of different forces. And the different number of allegiances, and betrayals. There are as many good films with half a dozen villains in them as there are bad ones. And I think that is sort of a facile thing to seize on as [an explanation for] 'This is why this worked, and this is why this didn't work.' Some of these things work because they're good, and some of them don't work because they're not. And I think if anyone had a formula for what makes one good, I would be very happy if they shared it with us, you know [Laughs.] The other thing that you're charged with when you're working on a comic book franchise is the desire on the part of the fans. I first approached this franchise first and foremost as a fan. I grew up loving Batman, and wanting to see all these characters up on the screen. And you kind of want to see as many aspects of this character's story you can do justice to.
Hustler wrote:I loved Jonah's answer in SciFi Magazine when asked if he was concerned about the plot being too cluttered due to so many characters:
Oh, I don't believe in any of that s**t! Everyone is always looking for excuses as to why something worked or why something didn't work. Even The Dark Knight has three villains in it, or six, depending on how you're counting them. It is just a question of whether you can pull it off. That's what it comes down to. I think a narrative is only as cluttered as you let it be. And if you're looking for scope and scale, you brought up The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Consider the number of characters in that. The number of different forces. And the different number of allegiances, and betrayals. There are as many good films with half a dozen villains in them as there are bad ones. And I think that is sort of a facile thing to seize on as [an explanation for] 'This is why this worked, and this is why this didn't work.' Some of these things work because they're good, and some of them don't work because they're not. And I think if anyone had a formula for what makes one good, I would be very happy if they shared it with us, you know [Laughs.] The other thing that you're charged with when you're working on a comic book franchise is the desire on the part of the fans. I first approached this franchise first and foremost as a fan. I grew up loving Batman, and wanting to see all these characters up on the screen. And you kind of want to see as many aspects of this character's story you can do justice to.
robboadam31 wrote:On another/similar note, when do interviews by cast and the director normally start coming through? And when's the premiere of this movie?
Putting Inception on the same time scale, they started around the end of June/early July.
