Empire magazine heeft de mogelijkheid gehad om Jonathan Nolan te interviewen. Deze Nolan is de broer van Christopher Nolan en schreef mede het script voor de box office knaller The Dark Knight Rises. In het interview wordt er onder meer ingehaakt om de mogelijke personages die volgens hem niet zouden hebben gepast in de TDK films, zijn verwachtingen bij de geplande Justice League en zijn gedachten over The Avengers, de succesvolste superheldenfilm van deze zomer.

Een van de vragen gaat over het personage Robin die opduikt in The Dark Knight Rises. Zijn visie op de wijze waarom de "side-kick" van Batman zo in de film is verwerkt: "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."

En hoe denkt hij over de minder realistische personages uit het Batman universum? Niet alle personages, zoals bepaalde villains, zijn te verwerken in de realistische aanpak van de Nolans: "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."

En wat vindt hij van de geplande Justice League film en de wijze waarop Batman daarin terug kan komen: "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."

En The Avengers? Heeft hij een beetje kunnen genieten van die superheldenfilm? "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."

Lees het gehele artikel op Empire.