As much as we love the Christopher Nolan Batman films, they will be coming to an end this July when The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters.
We geeks are certainly very grateful to Nolan for bringing Batman back to the big screen after Joel Schumacher ruined the franchise, and for raising the bar for comic films higher than ever.
Christian Bale will thankfully never be stuck doing superhero movies all his life, and Christopher Nolan should also have a strong career post-Batman as well.
Still, talking to Collider, Bale says he’s going to sorely miss playing the caped crusader. “‘Course I will, yeah. For all the discomfort and the heat and the sweat and the headaches and everything from it, when you sit back and watch the movie at the end of the day, you go: ‘Well, that’s f*ckin’ cool.’ I will miss that, I liked the good bit of rubber.”
Bale is also aware that like marriages, once you get up into threes, you can be pushing your luck with a movie franchise. But he said director Nolan “liked the challenge that an awful lot of movies fail on the third one. There are some exceptions but most of the time that’s the tricky one to pull off.”
As we reported here on TG, The Dark Knight Rises is done, the brass at Warner Brothers already screened it, but us normal folks still have to wait to see if Nolan made a great trilogy, or if two outta three ain’t bad. But of course, it’s very doubtful Batman will end here, whether Nolan and Bale will come back to the franchise or not.
As Bale concludes, “In honesty, there are probably a lot of stories that can be told with Batman. I like the idea of him growing older and he can’t quite do it as much anymore. But I kind of feel, you have to leave when the going is good and this is when Chris wants to wrap it up. And it’s the right time.”
Sure, like Johnny Carson said when he finally walked away from The Tonight Show, you’ve got to know when to get off the stage, and it’s too bad that this may be the last Bale / Nolan Batman film. I still fondly recall when I saw The Dark Knight opening day, and how great it is when an awesome movie comes out, and everyone’s talking about it, sharing the experience. I can’t wait to see if the last installment will have the same shared experience impact as the original Dark Knight, although it will also be a bittersweet experience to bid this era of Batman goodbye.
