Jonathan Nolan on JUSTICE LEAGUE, DARK KNIGHT RISES and THE AVENGERS

Dark Knight Rises co-writer Jonathan Nolan recently did an interview with Empire magazine in which he talked about the ending of the film, why other villains weren't used in it, his excitement for the upcoming Justice League movie, and what he thought about Joss Whedon's The Avengers. Here's a few quotes from the interview...

Here he talks about bringing Robin into Nolan's universe,

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.

I loved how Robin was included in the story, and Nolan's explanation of how John Blake knew Bruce Wayne was Batman is pretty cool. Nolan goes on to talk about why some of the other Batman characters didn't make the cut,

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.

There's so many other villains that Batman could take on in a film, and I hope the new reboot that Warner Bros. will eventually develop plays with those characters. He then goes on to talk about his excitement for Justice League,

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.

I'm sure he's got to know a little bit about what is happening with Justice League. I wonder if he was ever asked to work on it. He also talked about what he thought of The 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.

So there ya have it! Jonathan Nolan is a fanboy just like the rest of us!