Post Christopher Nolan
When filmmaker Christopher Nolan was presented in 2003 with the task of rejuvenating the Batman franchise, which had come to an indefinite halt in 1997 with Batman & Robin, he transformed Gotham City from a grotesque, fantasy fun house into an austere dystopia closely resembling modern New York City. Instead of relying on other-worldly theatrics to empower or threaten his characters, Nolan downsized the idea of superpowers and focused on the limits of human capacity; his superheroes became as human and as vulnerable as the extras. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Robin in The Dark Knight Rises, for example, isn’t a trapeze-swinging goofball—he’s simply a bleaker version of the same character he played in (500) Days of Summer. Likewise with the villains: Nolan gave DIY makeovers to the campy portrayals of Joker and Bane from the 80’s and 90’s so that we wouldn’t forget they’re real people.
Because it was no longer a given that Nolan’s heroes would emerge with their physical and moral integrity intact, there was suddenly more at stake, both for Nolan’s characters and for movie-goers. At the end of The Dark Knight, Nolan sacrifices the Batman superhero myth in order to preserve the hopeful image of Harvey Dent, a mere mortal, so that the people of Gotham would have a plausible figure to rely on. Batman disappears because he became too big for the world Nolan had created around him. He had to become human again.
If anti-hero is broadly defined as a flawed or unlikely protagonist, Nolan’s universe assumes everyone is an anti-hero. His rejection of the classic superhero can be traced to one weekend in July 1998, when two movies opened that shifted the cinematic depiction of humans. The movies Saving Private Ryan and There’s Something About Mary both presented man as a fallible and vulnerable creature, a depiction that the film industry would strive to replicate throughout the next decade. Saving Private Ryan introduced a raw, directionless lens to combat, contrasting with the glossy, focused scope of films like The English Patient or Braveheart. Sequences were shot at an unusual 45 degree shutter angle which made movement shaky and seem faster-than-life, a stylistic approach that is now so universal that one hardly notices it in films like Captain Phillips and The Hunger Games. With a lighter approach, There’s Something About Mary showed the appeal of human flaws by combining the raunchy comedy formula typified by Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey with a layer of human complexity and warmness, a combo that would later be honed by Judd Apatow. The reviews for There’s Something About Mary and Knocked Up were nearly identical. One critic said of Mary, “The movie managed to walk a line between raunchy, gross-out comedy and a romantic comedy,” and another of Knocked Up, “Engagingly raunchy, but strip away Apatow’s films of their vulgarity and they’d warm the heart of a Production Code censor from a half century ago.” Anti-hero has since become a questionable term because audiences have, on a larger-than-ever scale, embraced their flawed individuality and wish to see it represented on an equal scale.
Around 1999, a new wave of indie filmmakers emerged who were on a search for human authenticity that diverged from the existential intensity of auteurs such as Atom Egoyan and Lars von Trier. While wide audiences could no longer recognize their own lives in character-driven Hollywood productions, neither could they relate to the completely morose and inaccessible characters that propelled the work of Egoyan and von Trier. The new crop of indie filmmakers — Spike Jonze, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson, Alfonso Cuaron and a young Christopher Nolan — found that they could attract audience interest by warmly depicting flawed, endearing eccentrics. This led them to mistake idiosyncrasy for authenticity. Zac Braff’s and Natalie Portman’s quirky, outcasted exchanges in Garden State, for example, precisely hit the mark of quirky realness that filmmakers were looking for. The new indie aesthetic relied on a tweaked form of self-projection from the audience: I’m like them but only in the sense that I’m not like them or anyone else.
In 2004, Napoleon Dynamite’s successful blurring of cinematic categories (was it an indie comedy or a mainstream one?) signaled to indie directors that they could preserve their trademark styles while still achieving mainstream success. Little by little, the indie filmmakers veered towards large-scale projects, importing an indie sensibility to an 8- or 9-figure production budget.
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The Hogwarts castle in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is known to be enchanted so that if humans, or Muggles, find the castle, all they will see is ruins. One late night at the castle, Harry stumbles through some dark corridors. He notices something about it has been refashioned, or rescaled. It almost looks likes he could be in the Muggle world. And the vulnerability seeps in. Harry dons his invisibility cloak, but it doesn’t rid him of the feeling that the walls are closing in on him. Disappearing doesn’t make the world any less small.
The Boy Who Lived (2022), the first installment in a Harry Potter franchise reboot, inherits the dark tone of Deathly Hallows Part 2 from the old series. There is no chance for a Quidditch match or a PG rating. Grace is on board as the director. She was 2 when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out in 2001. Shortly after the reboot is announced, Grace proposes that the series be retold backwards. “Backwards?” Warner Bros asks. Grace is patiently thinking. They continue, “You mean the movies are released in reverse-chronological order? Or do you mean the series begins after Harry defeats Voldemort and ends with a cradle on a doorstep? Or does it continue further into the untold past, before the boy who lived?” “Yeah,” Grace finally replies, “Before there was anything at stake.”
The Blockbuster (2002-2007)
In 2002, I was a 14-year-old living in Western NY, unknowingly losing my vision while writing made up movie news and stats in the dark. I didn’t have immediate access to the Internet until May of that year, which I initially used for box office reports. Before that, I had Entertainment Weekly. It seemed fast enough to receive a weekend’s box office report the following Saturday, when Entertainment Weekly came in the mail. Previously I had relied on the local newspaper, which reported the previous weekend’s numbers in the Sunday paper. When I gained access to the Internet, I could get online Monday and read the weekend’s box office numbers a week sooner. (These days I can look on HollywoodReporter.com at noon on a Friday and read how each title is tracking — a resource which can indicate the movie’s entire weekend gross.)
Coincidentally, May 6, 2002 was one of the most surprising reports ever. At the time, it was insane for a movie to open with $75 million or more. I remember guessing around $65 million for Spider-Man, based on the numbers of The Mummy Returns (released May 4, 2001) rather than on X-Men or Batman & Robin since that May release date showed more consistent results than superhero movies did. When I read that it made $114.8 million, I foresaw a completely new code of box office dynamics in the decade ahead. That Monday, my classmates in gym class yelled at me as I just stood in the outfield, perplexed by this information, letting ball after ball pass me by.
Simply put, opening weekends started to account for a larger and larger share of ticket sales. Before Spider-Man, there were only 6 comic book adaptations that made over $30 million on their opening weekend. Now there are 45. In fact, before that weekend, there weren’t any movies that opened above $100 million. Now there are 26. Even adjusted for 2013’s ticket price inflation, there are still only 3 movies before Spider-Man that would have opened above $100 million: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001, $126.7 million adjusted for inflation); Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999, $101.3 million adjusted); and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997, $124.8 million adjusted). Before 1997, no movie grossed above $100 million on its opening weekend, even adjusting for inflation.
In 2007, for each weekend in May, June and July, the number 1 movie grossed more than $30 million (nine of those number 1 movies grossed over $50 million). But the movies’ total grosses were no more than before. May 2007 essentially signaled an end to this type of blockbuster. Within the four weekends of that month, sequels to three of the biggest movie franchises were released: Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. On the first weekend in May — five years since the first entry — Spider-Man 3 reclaimed the opening weekend record for its franchise from Dead Man’s Chest, making $151.1 million. Two weeks later, Shrek the Third opened to $121.6 million, a record for the franchise and any animated movie. Even though they posted huge numbers on their opening weekend, each movie’s total theatrical gross fell around $100 million short of their predecessor’s total. There was an overwhelming feeling of burnout by the end of the month. The problem was, while they were all big deals, there wasn’t any reason why a moviegoer should choose to see one over the other. There was such an abundance of blockbusters that the stakes no longer seemed high. On the last weekend in May 2007, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, perhaps the final pre-Christopher Nolan blockbuster, opened to $114.7 million, the same as Spider-Man in May 2002. It’s fitting that Scary Movie-descendant Superhero Movie was released, spoofing a genre that appeared to have reached its full potential, just a few months before The Dark Knight changed the game.
Post-Christopher Nolan (2008-Present)
A scene towards the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (July 2007), the fifth installment, lingers more than any other out of the eight movies. The students at Hogwarts are taking their final exams, monitored by the intolerable Dolores Umbridge, who has replaced Dumbledore as headmaster. A suspicious presence is detected by everyone in the Great Hall. The room is suddenly filled with a chaotic fireworks display orchestrated by the Weasley twins. This provides relief to both students and audience. With the rumored return of Voldemort and a school year devoid of Quidditch, fun is back in session. Everybody rushes outside to the balcony and cheers as the twins cast a “W” in the sky. When the camera focuses on Harry, the cheering drones and the waving and clapping slows. There’s a jump cut to an oblique angle of him. Then another, in which Harry stumbles and collapses. The soundtrack becomes one single drone. Hermione turns and sees him on the ground. We realize it’s real: Voldemort is back. The campaigns for the three remaining movies would be uncompromisingly dark. The following Harry Potter entry wasn’t released until July 2009, an usually long period of time for the franchise, as if to allow Nolan’s The Dark Knight, released in July 2008, time to adequately set the mood.
In addition to shifting the mood upon its release, The Dark Knight broke the records for midnight showing, opening day, and opening weekend. The shift toward human drama in big budget movies and shift towards opening weekend sales aren’t just simultaneous trends. The flawed individuality embraced by audiences not only changed their expectations but the way they anticipate entertainment. Movies were tapping into this growing sense of empathy and they expanded the theatrical experience from excitement to involvement. People were more intent on showing up all at once, and the best time for that was right away.
Nolan’s approach could be applied to nearly any franchise. The 2009 reboot of Star Trek focused less on impersonal adventure and more on the characters’ roots. It made four times more on its opening weekend than the prior Star Trek installment (Nemesis, 2002) and six times as much total. The post-Nolan Harry Potter movies no longer advertised their characters dressed in their intricate wizard robes, but in basic H&M attire. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) spent its first couple acts developing the relationship between James Franco and the ape in a suburban neighborhood. Studios also felt confident to redraft the Spider-Man franchise after just five years. In The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Peter Parker tests his powers for the first time while skateboarding. Instead of soaring from skyscraper to skyscraper in Manhattan as in Spider-Man (2002), Peter’s test consists of a montage of skate tricks and swinging around in a small warehouse to the soundtrack of one of the most subdued Coldplay songs ever. Big budget productions now share the same indie sensibilities as indie cinema in the smaller circuit, but there’s something clearly more exciting about spending $250 million on human drama than there is spending $500,000. The extra money must have gone somewhere, but Nolan has proven that it’s best to downplay where.
Nolan completed his Dark Knight saga in 2012 with The Dark Knight Rises. Its final trailer subdues everything that one would guess are its big selling points. The sounds of an airplane breaking into pieces, a football field exploding, two bridges collapsing, gunfire and even Christopher Nolan’s notoriously bombastic title card, are each replaced by a faint piano key. The promo assured us its grandiosity wasn’t about giant, exploding set pieces, but the scary idea that these things maybe aren’t that big of a deal in this world. The trailer was less intent on bombarding the audience with loud information than it was requiring them to listen closer. To break the deafening silence, Anne Hathaway whispers to Christian Bale, “There’s a storm coming.” By this point, we’re all ears.
In 2013, the marketing campaign for the The Hangover Part III was the first to poke at Nolan’s impact on the tone of movies. At the same time it avoided spoof territory and planted itself amongst the movies it referenced by simply drawing the energy/stylistic cues from a reboot without rebooting. The tagline, “It all ends,” and the trailer’s foreboding aerial shots of Las Vegas accompanied by the voice over, “Someone’s gotta burn this place to the ground,” appropriate the marketing campaign of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and every Heath Ledger line used in The Dark Knight promos. But it turned out The Hangover Part III was nothing like its promotional material, and it was never clear that The Hangover was a trilogy as its promos suggested. Whether or not a franchise is ending, it has become most marketable to hype each installment as a dark, grand finale to amplify the urgency.
This Nolanization of movie marketing is an evolution of the rising emphasis placed on the opening weekend of a movie in the past decade. The determining point of a movie’s success has shifted from throughout its theatrical run to the beginning (opening weekend) of its theatrical run to before its theatrical run. And it continues to move in that direction. The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the sequel to Star Wars, spent its first four weekends in limited release and then waited until its ninth and tenth weekend to expand again. It made more on its tenth weekend than its first weekend. Now audiences have learned to anticipate everything and to be on board as soon as possible, making attendance consistently frontloaded and leaving little room for surprise hits. Sleeper hits don’t exist anymore because of sleeper hits. The last movie to experience a theatrical run similar to The Empire Strikes Back was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which made around $1 million each weekend in its first ten weeks and ended up with a total gross of $241.4 million. It’s biggest weekend was its twentieth. It was released a couple weeks before Spider-Man in 2002.
Whether or not the trend is attributed to Nolan, his influence has been criticized to have allowed reboots to clog the movie release schedule. Marvel has 3 phases of superhero movies planned that take them into 2017. We’re presently in Phase 2, which Marvel will end with The Avengers: Age of Ultron in May 2015. But original content, free of franchise association, isn’t guaranteed to escape the lens through which reboots are being retold. Nor do franchises have to retell the same stories. A Phaseless era (referring to what happens after Marvel’s Phase 3) might not differ in the way that it ends reboots or remakes, but that it frees franchises from being tied to their own identities. In such a landscape, audiences could potentially look forward to three Dark Knight movies a year and by the end feel like they haven’t seen one. The question isn’t what is The Dark Knight about, but what else can The Dark Knight be about?
Batman is finally rebooted again in 2023. Caleb remembers going to the The Dark Knight midnight premiere fifteen years ago, when he was 19. Now he’s 34 and he’s bringing his seven year old son, Micah, to see the new movie. The showing is nearly sold out, but Caleb feels alone throughout the movie. When Caleb and Micah leave the theater, Caleb admits to his son, “I think I’m getting old. I didn’t know any of the stars in that movie.” Micah is confused for a second and responds, “Why would you know any of them?” Caleb says, “Because I should know who famous people are. I should keep up with culture.” Micah says, “Dad, relax. None of those people are famous.”
