In honor of The Dark Knight‘s 10th Anniversary earlier this week on July 18, ComingSoon.net is celebrating by delving into all the movies that Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece has inspired in the ensuing decade. Check out our list in the gallery below, and let us know of other Movies Since 2008 Inspired By The Dark Knight in the comments below!
Ten years ago, Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking blockbuster The Dark Knight was released. Commemorating the 10-year anniversary, Warner Bros. Pictures is bringing the film to four select IMAX locations for an exclusive, one-week engagement, beginning August 24, 2018.
With The Dark Knight, Nolan broke new ground—shooting select sequences of the movie with IMAX film cameras—making The Dark Knight the first major feature film to utilize IMAX 70mm film and take advantage of the format’s massive scale and increased resolution. The movie was hailed by both critics and audiences and went on to be the top-grossing release of 2008.
The exclusive limited engagement will offer the public an extremely rare opportunity to see The Dark Knight on the biggest screens possible, as it was intended to be seen—in IMAX 70mm film—offering a uniquely immersive cinematic experience. Tickets for the opening day go on sale this Friday, July 20, with showtimes only announced for August 24. The theatres will list additional showtimes for subsequent dates closer to release.
The Dark Knight will be playing for one screening a day at the following theatres:
AMC Universal Citywalk IMAX, Universal City
AMC Lincoln Square IMAX, New York City
AMC Metreon IMAX, San Francisco
Ontario Place Cinesphere IMAX, Toronto
The Dark Knight stars Christian Bale in the title role and Heath Ledger, who won an Oscar for his performance as The Joker. The ensemble cast also includes Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Morgan Freeman.
Nolan directed The Dark Knight from a screenplay written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer. Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan produced the film. Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan, Kevin De La Noy and Thomas Tull served as executive producers.
10 Movies Since 2008 Inspired By The Dark Knight
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Punisher: War Zone (2008)
Having been released right on the heels of The Dark Knight, it's hard to imagine that this explosively violent Marvel movie would have anything to do with Dark Knight. However, director Lexi Alexander has said that the studio replaced her intended musical score, which embraced the film's B-movie feel, with a more grounded action movie score to make it specifically more akin to Dark Knight.
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Director Samuel Bayer told Fangoria that The Dark Knight was the main influence behind his remake of the Wes Craven classic: "I told all my cast and crew that we must do with Freddy what Christopher Nolan did with Batman. I’m trying to make a dark and serious film, and I hope I’m achieving that. One of the most extraordinary aspects of 'Dark Knight' is the way it integrates Batman into a believable world, and I want to do just the same with Freddy."
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Skyfall (2012)
Director Sam Mendes took a great deal from the Dark Knight playbook, from the dour tone to the moral grey area of the hero to the terrorist villain who gets caught on purpose and occasionally has a point.
Mendes even said this to The Playlist: "What Nolan proved was that you can make a huge movie that is thrilling and entertaining and has a lot to say about the world we live in, even if, in the case with ‘The Dark Knight,’ it’s not even set in our world. It felt like a movie that was about our world post-9/11, and played on our fears, and discussed our fears and why they existed and I thought that was incredibly brave and interesting. That did help give me the confidence to take this movie in directions that, without ‘The Dark Knight,’ might not have been possible. Because also, people go, ‘Wow, that’s pretty dark,’ but then you can point to ‘Dark Knight’ and go ‘Look at that – that’s a darker movie, and it took in a gazillion dollars!’ That’s very helpful. There’s also that thing – it’s clearly possible to make a dark movie that people want to see."
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The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
While Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy was a throwback to the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko comics, the Andrew Garfield-led reboots from director Marc Webb were clearly trying to instill some of the grit and darker themes of Nolan's Batman Trilogy, right down to Peter's love Gwen Stacy biting the dust in the followup film Amazing Spider-Man 2.
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Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
J.J. Abrams' first Star Trek movie in 2009 was wild and rambunctious, but still retained the central utopian philosophy of Gene Roddenberry's original. Not so the sequel, as Into Darkness managed to weave in terrorism, Federation treachery and that oh-so-inappropriate 9-11 truther nonsense. It even took The Dark Knight's "bad guy getting caught on purpose" interrogation thing, although Benedict Cumberbatch is no Heath Ledger.
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Man of Steel (2013)
Considering its story was conceived by Dark Knight architects Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, it's no surprise that Man of Steel feels like the Nolan-ized version of the Superman mythos, despite having actually been helmed by Zack Snyder. Its debatable whether Superman NEEDED the dark and gritty reboot it got, but for better or worse it set the tone for all the DCEU movies that followed.
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
With the Russo Brothers' inaugural Marvel outing, they sought to take a tonal left turn with the Captain America franchise, going from the WWII serial-inspired adventures in The First Avenger to the more grounded, morally grey tone of Winter Soldier. The camerawork, pacing and overall feel of the film owes a great deal to Dark Knight, and is the most Nolan-esque of all the films the studio has made.
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Godzilla (2014)
One need only look at Guillermo del Toro's colorful, crazy Pacific Rim to contrast Gareth Edwards' more grounded, post 9-11 exploration of Godzilla. The echoes of urban terrorism, the link to real-life nuclear disasters, the muted color scheme... it's all straight out of The Dark Knight 101.
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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
After working under the thumb of producer Christopher Nolan on Man of Steel, Zack Snyder really cut loose on the followup Batman v Superman. While very much stylistically a Snyder film, the way he portrays the balance of Bruce Wayne's corporate life with his hard-riding vigilante nature is the type of Batman you wouldn't have seen had Nolan's version not existed. Of course, Batman's more violent nature abandon's Christian Bale's "I only have one rule" ethos for... no rules?
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Black Panther (2018)
While stylistically Black Panther bears almost no resemblance to The Dark Knight, Michael B. Jordan's Erik Killmonger strikes a similar villainous tone as Heath Ledger's Joker. He's the baddie who wants to watch the world burn... but you sorta see his point, at least philosophically. That level of complexity in a villain is certainly the legacy of The Dark Knight carried forth to a new generation of superhero films.
