Jonathan Nolan on Justice League and Batman

Jonathan Nolan (writer of The Dark Knight Trilogy and Man of Steel) recently spoke with Empire Magazine.  Here are some of the more interesting questions posed to him:

We have to ask about the Robin gag at the end. We’d always wondered how possible it would be to make that character work in this version of the Batman universe, and this has to have been the only way.


It is a little hard to imagine Robin working in that universe, so the idea had to be limited to that gag at the end. But Joe’s character is very important to the story. In any movie you need a character looking at proceedings the way you see them, and Joe’s character is that character for this film. One of my favourite scenes is when John tells Bruce how he knew he was Batman. It’s like that scene in The Prestige where the little kid sees through Christian’s trick. Little kids, they don’t have any illusions, they just see the truth of the situation. I feel there’s a kind of spiritual connection between the two movies there.

There are of course many other Batman characters that it would have been hard to imagine in these movies…


Yeah, like Clayface or, indeed, The Penguin. Part of what’s compelling about Chris’s take is the naturalism of it and I think that’s one of the things I loved about the Frank Miller comic books was that they were sort of urban, gritty vigilante stories first and formost. So everything had to stick within that universe. It’s hard to imagine [in these movies] any of the rogue’s gallery characters who have sort of a more supernatural or science-fiction bent to them. And I think that’s one of the aspects of Batman which are fascinating: in 70 years, the character has been sort of fully laundered. Because of writers and artists having every month coming up with a different story to tell with this character, there are often different genre aspects to it. You have your science-fictions, you’ve had fantasy elements along the way, horror, camp comedy… I mean there are so many different versions.

Are you curious about the plans for the Justice League movie, and seeing Batman in that very different context?


I’m incredibly excited. I was a big Batman fan when I was a kid. In fact he was the only comic-book character I really liked. I went through a brief spell where I was reading Captain Britain, because I was an English kid living in the States, and Wolverine for 30 seconds, Spider-Man too, but really Batman was the one. And I love that there are different versions of the character. I love that in the context of The Justice League, he’s kind of the black sheep of that family.

Speaking of supergroups, did you see Avengers?


I did. To me Joss Whedon is a god, I’m just a huge fan of his work, I love his work on TV. And I thought The Avengers was just an incredible achievement.

First Look: Malekith on the Set of Thor: The Dark World

To read more about Malekith, click here: THOR: THE DARK WORLD Villain is Malekith The Accursed

Tom Hiddleston (Loki) on pressure of doing a sequel following The Avengers:

“It’s mostly self-applied pressure actually. I remember Chris [Hemsworth] and I saying over the summer when Avengers came out, where do we go now? Going into this one we were – very flatteringly – involved in big creative conversations about tone, and story. Thor and Loki are these two characters that people know and love and understand – so we have to take this in the right direction. You want to do something new – you don’t want to re-heat the same recipe in the microwave, you want to cook up something different and exciting – but you don’t want to lose the things that worked the first time. So we’re our own slave drivers, in a way. Complacency is the enemy. But that’s exciting and it’s going well. I have never seen a group of actors or a crew work harder.”

On Loki getting smashed by the Hulk:

“Yeah! [laughs]  He’s certainly eaten humble pie. The springboard for us in the second Thor film is at the end of Avengers you see Thor and Loki beamed up back to Asgard. The first question that we all asked was ‘what happens next? What does Odin have to say about the events of Avengers?’ ‘What’s Jane Foster been up to while she wasn’t involved?’ It’s really exciting, actually. We’re literally half way through – we started at the start of August and we should be finished by Christmas. It’s going beautifully.”

Justice League Movie Planned for 2015

This is an interesting choice considering that Marvel’s The Avengers 2 will be coming out that same summer.  Unlike The Avengers, Justice League will spin individual movies off of it, rather than have individual character movies come first.  I think DC would have been much better off to build up each of the characters through their own films first, then have a Justice League movie.  Christopher Nolan was asked, but declined to produce the film.  I suppose we shall see how it turns out.

Chris Hemsworth on Thor: The Dark World

On director Alan Taylor:  “I love the way he adds an incredibly organic element to the fantastical world of Thrones, and I think that’s what Thor could benefit from. It’s grounded in reality, no matter how mythical or science-fiction-like it becomes. There’s a truth to it all. Certainly, working with him now, you can see he doesn’t want Thor or the Asgardians to seem like some distant race or god-like. He still wants them to be relatable.”

On into getting into character:  “For Thor there’s a lot of ongoing reading and rereading of the script. I have a guy that I work with a lot who’s a voice coach, but also far more than that. We pull scripts apart and go into who these people are; his whole attitude of approaching a character is, instead of trying to mimic something or work out technically how you do that, it’s more why does someone speak like that. What’s in your personality or nature, or your past that has moulded you into sounding like this? That then raises a whole lot of questions about the character – which is great. You do that all the way through the film, even afterwards it’s hard to switch off sometimes.”

On why Thor has an English accent:  “For whatever reason, it just seems to fit that world. Probably for no other reason than that it’s the way it’s been done in history. We associate Shakespearean speak [with god-like beings] because so many British actors have done it over the years. It resonates with the audience. Also, we had Anthony Hopkins, who is Welsh but has similar tones. I certainly couldn’t play him as Australian because people would think, “That’s Crocodile Dundee!”

The first Thor was a movie I didn’t expect a lot from but ended up being pleasantly surprised.  The change in directors is a little worrisome because you never know what you are going to get.  It could be better but it could be worse as well.  It doesn’t seem like this one takes place on earth at all, but deals more with Thor’s realm.  This is fine with me since Thor has already come to earth twice to deal with problems.

Guillermo del Toro on the Hulk TV Series

“Right now all I know is the official word I was given is that there’s a writer they want,” says del Toro. “They are very interested in me meeting with him. He’s very, very busy. The official word is we are holding, but I don’t know… After ‘Avengers’ having the success it had, perhaps the fate of the project may change. Right now officially what I know – and I’m not hiding anything off the record or anything – is that we were told we were waiting for this writer, and we were going to do it with him.”

I have heard about this Hulk tv series for a while now but I am not sure why they would develop a tv show instead of a movie.  The Hulk stole the show in the Avengers and is one of the most popular characters in the Marvel Universe.  Not to mention a tv series would be pretty expensive to produce.  Also, would it be separate from the Hulk in the first movie and the Avengers or would it be following the same version?  I hope they drop this idea and proceed with the Hulk 2 instead.

The Avengers

With the release of The Avengers on DVD/Blu-ray this week, I have decided to review the summer blockbuster.  The basic plot revolves around Loki, the brother of Thor, working for a mysterious alien and leading an army to earth so he can rule.  To counter this attack, a secret Government organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. assembles the earth’s mightiest heroes.  Pretty much everyone loves this movie and I like it as well.  It’s a big, fun, summer popcorn flick and there is nothing wrong with that.

Marvel has taken years to build up to this film by making movies about the individual characters first.  This was a very wise plan.  Team movies with big casts tend to have the problem of trying to develop all of their characters in a 2-2.5 hour time span.  By having one or more individual movies come out first, everyone is already familiar with all of the characters in the movie.  This allows them to move straight into the action.

The only real complaint I have about The Avengers is that I didn’t care for the Governments technology very much.  Besides Iron Man, who is supposed to be way ahead of his time, the technology that had been shown in the previous films was basically what we have in real life.  But S.H.I.E.L.D.  has flying air craft carriers and all sorts of crazy gadgets, it just felt like watching a G.I. Joe cartoon from the 1980s.  This isn’t a big deal, I haven’t even heard anyone else mention it, so it’s probably just me.

Each of our heroes gets plenty of screen time and fight scenes.  For the first half of the movie they are fighting each other more than the bad guys.  Once they finally all come together and face off against the alien force at the end, it’s nothing but a huge free for all.  I never really felt like the world was in danger from this threat but New York was.  Apparently you shouldn’t live in New York because it’s always under attack by super villains in the movies!

It’s during the last third of the movie that the Hulk really steals the show.  Everyone loved this character and his use as comic relief.  It surprises me that Marvel hasn’t already put the Hulk 2 into production.  Perhaps they will soon.  After the credits we get a hint at who the bad guy in the next one will be, and he is a big one.  For people who don’t follow the comic books and were wondering who “the purple guy” was, his name is Thanos and he is a major threat to anyone.  Thanos is a guy who can beat even powerful beings like Thor or the Silver Surfer in a one on one fight.

Like I said before, The Avengers is a big, fun, popcorn flick and there is nothing wrong with that.  I give it 3 out of 4 stars.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Logo Released

Marvel has release the logo for the Guardians of the Galaxy film, coming in 2014.  What do you think about this choice for one of their new properties?  I don't think most average people know much about this comic as compared to many others like The Hulk, Avengers, Iron Man, etc.

There have been a couple of different versions of this team so I do not know exactly what the movie will be about but the original Guardians of the Galaxy was about a team of superheros from the 31th century in an alternate time line in the Marvel Universe.  It will be interesting to see how they tie into the Avengers and the other Marvel heroes in the already established movies.

The Dark Knight Rises This Week!

The Dark Knight Rises opens this week!  Who is going on opening night?  I already know it's going to be crazy busy so I will probably wait till Saturday morning (which will still probably be packed) or sometime on Sunday.

I remember when I saw The Avengers on the morning after it opened I almost couldn't find a seat.  Spider-man I waited to see for a few days, it was crowded but not to badly.  Let me know in the comments when you plan to see The Dark Knight Rises.