A couple weeks ago Better than Fudge spent some time chatting with director Christopher Nolan about his new flick "The Prestige", and of course talk about the Batman Begins sequel "The Dark Knight" came up.
Whereas the first film dealt with fear and the line between revenge and justice as themes, Nolan says the second deals with escalation and in loose terms "[how] things have to get worse before they get better". He also suggests the title plays a key part - "The title has been chose very specifically. It's quite important to the film".
Also interesting is what's planned for his take on The Joker - "I would certainly point to The Killing Joke but I also would point very much to the first two appearances of the Joker in the comic. If you look at where the Joker comes from there's a very clear direction that fits what we're doing very well".
Fans who were worried about Nolan making the character a more light hearted comical type like Jack Nicholson can rest easy it seems. The first two appearances of the character portrayed The Joker as a straightforward mass murderer and master thief who left smiling corpses in his wake. It was only a good dozen issues down the track that the character was changed to become a more comical and less deadly buffoon.
Also for those unfamiliar, 'The Killing Joke' was a famous and well-known one-off comic in which a back story of The Joker was mixed with a main story in which he tried to drive Commissioner Gordon insane through various ways, most notably shooting his daughter Barbara (aka. Batgirl) and leaving her a paraplegic.
The full interview appears in Mean Magazine which hits the streets October 23rd and will include a large lengthy dialogue on the subject.
