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The Dark Knight was one of the biggest cinematic hits of 2008, earning rapturous acclaim from critics and grossing a worldwide total of over one billion dollars at the box office, becoming only the fourth film in history to do so. More than a decade later It remains a beloved film, even with many other superhero films competing for audience attention. Given the runaway success of The Dark Knight and its trilogy stablemates Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises, there is one question that will spring to many people’s minds: how did the ‘Dark Knight’ franchise become so big and popular?
To find an answer, we will have to take a trip back in time through Batman’s history. The superhero made his comic debut in 1939 and his film appearances began shortly afterward. He inspired a pair of film serials in the 1940s: the first was titled simply Batman and was released in 1943 with Lewis Wilson starring; the second was Batman and Robin, which starred Robery Lowery and Johnny Duncan as the two heroes and was released in 1949. These entertained audiences in their day, but it was not until 1966 that Batman made his first truly iconic appearance on screen. That was the year that saw the debut of the Batman television series starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin.
Full of bright colours, over-the-top costumes and deliberately cartoonish fight scenes (complete with the words “wham” and “pow” appearing onscreen) the 1966 Batman series achieved cross-generational appeal. Children loved it for its thrills and excitement, but viewers old enough to see the self-aware humour could enjoy the whole series as one big joke. This helped the series to retain its popularity for a significant amount of time, clocking up 120 episodes at the time of its conclusion in 1968 and continuing to perform well in reruns over subsequent decades. The series was big enough of a hit in its first year to spin off into Batman: The Movie, marking the hero’s first-ever full-length feature film.
However, the next Batman film would not come out until 1989, and by then times had changed. The Batman comic books had evolved, and begun exploring darker themes. Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s comic The Killing Joke made the argument that Batman and his arch-enemy the Joker were, ultimately, not so different: they were both unhinged men who donned garish outfits and committed acts of violence to cope with their psychological issues. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, meanwhile, depicts an older Batman coming out of retirement and contemplating whether this newer, more complicated world needs him at all.
By that point, the innocent good humour of the 1960s series seemed embarrassingly out of date; but yet for many mainstream audiences who did not follow the comics, it was still the most familiar incarnation of Batman. The 1989 Batman film faced a challenge: it had to adapt the darker Batman comics of the 1980s faithfully and do a convincing enough job of it to drive the campy 1960s version of the character out of audiences’ minds.
But the crew behind the film pulled it off, and the 1989 Batman was a massive hit. Actor Michael Keaton, at the time best known for his comedy roles, offered an unusual take on the main character, playing both an imposing costumed vigilante and a disarmingly nerdy, awkward alter ego. Jack Nicholson made a sterling Joker, playing a genuinely creepy character quite unlike the harmlessly silly version of the sixties. The script tapped into the dark themes of contemporary Batman comics and explored the psychological states of both hero and villain. Director Tim Burton, meanwhile, brought all of the elements together, creating an art deco-influenced Gotham City within the confines of a Warner Brothers studio.
So popular was the film that, inevitably, sequels soon followed. The first was Batman Returns, released in 1992, in which Burton and Keaton reunited to pit Batman against a new pair of villains: Danny DeVito’s creepy Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer’s sultry Catwoman. The next in the series, Batman Forever from 1995, saw a shake-up behind the scenes, with Val Kilmer stepping in as Batman and Joel Schumacher taking over as director.
Schumacher turned out to have a quite different aesthetic to Tim Burton. Although Burton’s Gothic approach always had a touch of the cartoonish about it, he clearly took his Gotham City seriously. With Schumacker, however, the general impression was that, at the end of the day, he saw the Batman saga as a bit of a joke. The decision to cast zany comedian Jim Carey as the villainous Riddler further underlined that this was a Batman film with its tongue in its cheek. Schumacher also directed the next film, Batman & Robin (1997), which unabashedly embraced camp comedy in a misguided attempt to evoke the spirit of the colourful 1960s series. The results went down badly with audiences, and what was one a blockbuster franchise floundered: it was eight years before another Batman film came out.
When the character finally returned in 2005, it was in a film very different from Joel Schumacher’s version. Batman Begins made a concerted effort to bring the character back to his gritty, Gothic roots. Starring Christian Bale and directed by Christopher Nolan, the film showed exactly how Bruce Wayne became Batman, a story that — surprisingly — had never been told in detail in any of the previous films. It also pitted him against arguably his biggest screen villain to date: Ra’s Al Ghul, an occult mastermind played by Liam Neeson with an ancient cult of ninja assassins at his disposal. Well-written and slickly directed, Batman Begins demonstrated that Batman could still be taken seriously as a worthy part of the twenty-first-century cinematic landscape.
Audiences clamoured for a sequel and got one in 2008 with The Dark Knight. It came at exactly the right time: the disappointment of the Joel Schumacher films had faded and audiences were in love with Batman again. So, when this latest film reunited Batman with his most famous villain, the Joker, the public lapped it up. The real star this time was not Christian Bale but rather Heath Ledger, who put in an unforgettably creepy performance as the clown-faced antagonist. His chilling line “why so serious?” quickly became etched not the public consciousness, becoming almost certainly one of the best-known and most widely-quoted lines of dialogue in film.
2012 brought with it the final film in the trilogy. The Dark Knight Rises. This was not as well-received as the previous two instalments, but it was still a success overall and further demonstrated that there was still life in the character yet. Further incarnations of Batman have come and gone, and it seems safe to say that many more will be waiting in the wings — thanks, in large part, to The Dark Knight becoming such a hit with audiences.
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The media landscape continues to change. Today’s audiences have access to everything from YouTube to Netflix, etc., all competing for entertainment time. But The Dark Knight still remains popular, and the film is certain to thrill and amaze audiences as future generations rediscover this classic of the early twenty-first century.
