Grounded in realism...
Grounded in realism — grounded in heightened realism, grounded in the degree of realism that we expected at the time from, you know, our action movies, Jerry
Bruckheimer action movies and things, that would have realistic textures, you know? So, "OK, let’s do that." 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. So we
started putting together this amazing cast based around Christian [Bale], who seemed perfect for Batman, but bringing him Sir Michael Caine and Gary Oldman
and Morgan Freeman and Tom Wilkinson. It was just incredible.
At that time, were you thinking, “I’m signing myself up for multiple films”?
No, not at all. I only had a deal to do the one film. When I first spoke about the project with [screenwriter] David Goyer, I think we said, "I guess if it
was successful. …" At the time, everybody thought in terms of trilogies, which I guess they probably don’t anymore because they split the third film into two.
|
|
(Laughs.) But at the time, The Matrix guys were doing their sequels, everything was about trilogies, "What’s the trilogy?!" And we didn’t want to answer that
question. Privately, ourselves, we started to put together a vague idea of where a second and third film were going, and then I immediately shot them down. I
was like, “You know what? You’ve got to put everything into the one movie and just try and make a great movie because you may not get this chance again.” And
then, when it succeeded, we were able to think about, "OK, what would we do in a sequel?" We were able to adapt and grow with the way the public perceived the
films and with what the films became, as opposed to trying to plan ahead, you know, five years, six years or whatever. And we were given the time by the studio
to let them fall, so three years between that movie and Dark Knight and four years between Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises, you know?
Batman Movie Countdown
BATMAN V SUPERMAN
|
