Christopher Nolan Didn't Want to Make The Dark Knight Rises: 'No Good Third Sequels'

Christopher Nolan is among the most celebrated movie directors of our time, having tapped into various genres throughout his fruitful career, from mind-bending neo-noir detective thrillers to space sci-fi operas to biography dramas and many others.

Funnily enough, despite his broad directing range, some people still recognize Nolan primarily for The Dark Knight trilogy, his sensational take on Batman ’s story. But little did we know that the director didn’t even want to make its final installment at all!

Nolan Resents Third Movie Installments

While Christopher Nolan has always been vocal about not being interested in the superhero genre —- which is amusing coming from the man who created one of the best superhero adaptations ever — it wasn’t his general attitude to the genre that almost kept him from making The Dark Knight Rises. It was something rather weird.

Christopher Nolan… Doesn’t like third installments of movie franchises, as simple as that. In Tom Shone’s book The Nolan Variations, the director addressed his initial reluctance to make the threequel.

“There are no good third sequels… Maybe Rocky III. But they are very difficult,” Nolan shared with the author. What a take, right?

Indeed, nailing the third installment is always harder than the original movie or its direct sequel, but to say that there are no good threequels is too strong of a statement. Surely, Nolan knows about The Good, The Bad and the Ugly?..

How Nolan Cheated the ‘Threequel Curse’

Despite his disregard for the third installments, Christopher Nolan was still contractually obligated to make the finale of his Dark Knight trilogy. Understandably, the director didn’t want to fall another victim of his “threequel curse,” so he decided to cheat it — and make a great third movie, ending Batman’s story on a high note.

“My instinct was to change genres. The first [movie] is an origin story. The second one is a crime drama very much like Heat, and the third one, we needed to blow up bigger, because you can’t scale down. We went for the historical epic, the disaster film, The Towering Inferno meets Doctor Zhivago,” Nolan explained.

While we may not agree with the director about there being no good third movies, we admit that his approach to The Dark Knight Rises allowed him to shake things up and not fall from grace with the trilogy finale. Christian Bale ’s Bruce Wayne received a fitting and upbeat closure, and we received an amazing piece of cinema.

And everyone won — except for the many directors who did threequels and were probably a little bit upset by Christopher Nolan’s take on their works.

Source: The Nolan Variations by Tom Shone