All in all, this was a decent summer. There were plenty of highs and lows, with zero grand achievements for either sides of that scale. We could argue endlessly about what movies lived up to the hype or which ones totally blew it, but where’s the fun in having that conversation for the thousandth time over twitter? What we all should be discussing is the important stuff, like, how sad Damon Lindelof‘s Twitter feed could get this summer or how many ounces of man sweat we think Matthew McConaughey shed in Magic Mike? These are the real topics worthy of discussion, ’cause who cares why Vickers didn’t run a few feet to the right to easily save her life in Prometheus? Or how on earth Batman survived that nuclear blast when we clearly saw him in The Bat before the blast? These are details we all need to let go of. What you all really need to know is who came out as the winners and losers of this summer season, and I’m here to tell you who.

The trailer for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel recently made it online after rolling in front of the related DC property The Dark Knight Rises. Reactions have been mostly positive to the somber looking film, with words like “restrained” being laid upon it. Many have chosen to highlight the apparent effect that Batman producer/director Christopher Nolan has had on the Superman story. The trailer for Supes does seem to harken to a more Batman Begins esque story rather than say, Superman Returns or Green Lantern. Hey, the Batman movies were good for the most part right? Having Christopher Nolan involved is a great idea, right? Well, not if you want your universe to do anything other than implode.

There’s no doubt that Batman has had a profound effect on the life of Christopher Nolan. The writer/director has lived and breathed the character cinematically for the better part of a decade, the resulting movies have made him one of the most revered popular filmmakers in the world, and their success has helped him craft large-scale creative stories outside of Gotham. So how do you say goodbye to a figure you know you’ll never see again? A colleague of sorts that you won’t see around the office anymore? Damned eloquently is the answer. Nolan wrote the foreword to “The Art and Making of the Dark Knight Trilogy,” and it reads a bit like a farewell letter. An incredibly touching, fitting farewell letter.

Over at /Film, they’ve posted an excellent (and very detailed) map of Batman’s own Gotham City, thanks to Brandon T. Snider‘s all-new “The Dark Knight Manual.” Laid out in a traditional style, the officially approved map is one heck of a tool when it comes to contextualizing Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight trilogy and just where the action of his beloved blockbusters plays out, and it’s a true must-examine for all Batman fans. But it’s not the only richly imagined comic book city out there – DC Comics in particular has crafted some notable fictional cities over the years, and seeing them rendered in such a manner is the stuff geeking out is made of. A little bit of digging around the Internet turned up a number of comic book city maps worth a look (though none of them as official as Snider’s look at Gotham), including takes on Metropolis, Smallville, Central City, the locations of the Mega Cities, and even a map of Manhattan that includes “real” locations for a number of important Marvel Comics structures and sites. Take a look after the break.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises (and other Christopher Nolan films). Christopher Nolan is the first director to make more than two Batman films. In the past, a second Batman film has provided a space for filmmakers to explore their excesses. In the case of Batman Returns, Tim Burton was able to further develop a vision of Gotham as an elaborate fairy tale. Batman & Robin was Joel Schumacher’s venue for exploring Batman as full-blown camp. For Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight manifested a mammoth vision of the summer superhero blockbuster by way of Jules Dassin and Michael Mann, where the Gotham setting gave way to an intricate, sprawling matrix of a metropolis that contains an eternal struggle between order, chaos, and every gray gradation in between. Until Nolan released The Dark Knight Rises, however, a Batman story reaching a third and final act was without precedent in the hero’s manifestations within the moving image. Not only has no previous director articulated a vision of the Caped Crusader in three parts, but no film, serial, or television show has attempted to bring a definitive end to their particular version of the superhero’s arc. The Batman of the moving image is one that largely exists in perpetuity. That Nolan has attempted a completist, closed vision of the Batman universe is relatively anomalous. Despite The Dark Knight Rises’s virtues and shortcomings (and the film has both of these in spades), perhaps the major reason for the film’s comparably

Was there any ever doubt that The Dark Knight Rises was going to be one of the most talked about and praised films of the summer? Christopher Nolan‘s trilogy had seemingly secured positive reviews before the release date was here thanks to some zealous fans and people who can’t keep their bat-boners of expectation tucked into their utility belts of rationality. For The Dark Knight Rises to get a truly negative review it would have had to fail massively as both Batman and Nolan have earned a bit of leeway in the judgement department. Now that the film is screening in front of millions, the general consensus seems to be – it’s good! And then we hushedly whisper “but not great.” I enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises overall, but if you’re looking for a list of everything that was awesome, look elsewhere. For I come not to praise The Dark Knight Rises, but to bury it. (Yes, that’s Shakespeare in reverse.)

This week in our Scenes We Love series, we continue the theme of last week’s special week-long edition by celebrating the work of Christopher Nolan. Only this time we’re not talking about Nolan through the lens of Batman on film. We’re here to take a look at four scenes from Nolan’s other films. From Memento to Inception and beyond, Nolan has proven himself to be a dynamic, contemplative player who can deliver small scenes with big emotional resonance and big scenes that dazzle. All is represented as we talk through 4 Scenes We Love from the non-Batman films of Christopher Nolan.

Every weeknight, Movie News After Dark comes to you with news and notes on a variety of topics. The goal: find the best articles and most interesting items of the day. From around the web, we bring together a selection of links that hopefully enhance your enjoyment of the world of film. It’s our way of reminding you that there are great things to read and see out there, and not just from within the confines of this site. But every once in a while a news story opens itself up to a broader discussion, and MNAD takes a longer look at the reactions from our friends and neighbors in the blogosphere. We always hope that such an event will be a positive story. This one happens to be an unthinkable tragedy.

For a man who has 8 films under his belt as a director, it seems like Christopher Nolan has been in the movie world forever. His dominance of the 2000s was so thorough and immediate that it only seemed natural to include his name amongst the greats even with a relatively limited resume. Even so, whenever conversations of the director emerge, they seem to focus on his take on Batman, his exploration of magic and deception, the idea of memory loss and toying with narrative. The movie that’s notoriously missing is his sophomore feature, his first studio picture, Insomnia. The remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name starred Al Pacino as a LA detective brought to the no-horse town of Nightmute, Alaska during a time of year when the sun never sets. Brought in to help with a brutal homicide, Detective Dormer finds himself mentally unraveling after a foggy accident, many sunny nights without sleep and an internal investigation back home that threatens to end his career. It’s a strong crime film with outstanding performances that doesn’t deserve to be forgotten about in the wake of Batman, Bale and breaking into dreams. Insomnia is a movie worth a second look.

As superhero movies go, few have been as highly anticipated as Christopher Nolan’s final outing as captain of the Batman franchise. The Dark Knight Rises received a level of hype and hoopla second only to the superhero Cobb salad that is Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, and now, finally, the long-awaited Friday has arrived. So once you see the movie, what happens if your eyeballs remain unquenched of their thirst for Gotham’s caped protector? With the future of the franchise uncertain, might we offer the alternative of returning to some of the printed source material from whence it came? I’m no comic book expert, that much is clear any time I speak with the true comic literati. However, Batman is the one character I’ve read in-depth and he continues to be my favorite hero. While watching The Dark Knight Rises, I became antsy to go home and read some of my favorite stories. Below is a list of Batman comics we highly recommend that you tear into should a similar inclination grip you. Be forewarned: the reason this article is titled as such is that some of these stories will spoil elements that comprise the surprises of Nolan’s film. See the movie first, then read…

With temperatures on the rise and Comic-Con officially over, there is one place comic book fans can still find solace in the middle of these hot summer months – your local movie theaters. Christopher Nolan is poised to complete his epic Batman trilogy with the highly anticipated The Dark Knight Rises, set to hit theaters this weekend. Not only will Christian Bale be returning as Gotham’s caped crusader, he will once again be joined by his trusty butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), his business manager/tech wizard, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and Batman champion, Commission Gordon (Gary Oldman) – to name a few. And in true Nolan fashion, some other faces familiar to the director’s work will help round out this final battle with Inception alums Tom Hardy taking on the villain role as Bane and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as hopeful police officer, John Blake. But Nolan’s affinity for working with those he has before does not stop at the cast. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight composer Hans Zimmer (whose score for Inception was one of the most memorable of 2010) returns to finish out the trilogy as well. While most of us will have to wait until this Friday (or for you late-nighters, Thursday at midnight) to see the conclusion of this heroic tale, Zimmer’s score (now available) takes us there now.

It’s about escalation. Christopher Nolan has not been shy about what to expect from the final chapter in his Batman series. The Dark Knight Rises is about something bigger and meaner in every sense possible. For his main character, the caped crusader we’ve known through countless years and iterations, it’s about facing the escalation he created when he became Gotham’s symbol. But for the filmmaker behind him, equally adored in the halls of pop culture for his contemporary epics, it’s about creating something so big that no one will dare forget it. On a scale that is off the charts, putting emphatic punctuation on the end of his dissertation on the rise and fall of a hero. And he’s done it. But at what cost?

Born in July of 1970, Christopher Nolan was always sort of made for Summer. As an adult, that promise has been fulfilled with blockbuster spectacles in the hot months, but it all started when he was a child. It was then that he picked up the drug that became an obsession for the rest of his life: a Super 8 camera. The result of those early ambitions and the study of storytelling in college led him to create shorts, build a feature in Memento that drew acclaim, and to embark on a studio career that has blended intelligence with popular culture. He’s invaded our dreams, altered a genre and made magic. So here’s a bit of free film school (for fans and filmmakers alike) from a man who is waiting for a train…

Ever since names like Spielberg and Lucas brought us the first summer blockbusters back in the 70s, film fans have slowly morphed into film fanatics. And perhaps the pinnacle of this phenomenon is the cult of personality that has developed around Christopher Nolan since he gave us his wildly successful interpretation of the Batman universe, The Dark Knight. Whether it was because of Heath Ledger’s electric performance as the Joker, Nolan’s realist approach to the material, or the sheer scope of the action, something about this Batman movie captured the attention and adoration of hordes of fans in a way that no other adaptation of the character’s story has before; and Batman has been one of the most popular fictional characters in our shared culture for at least half a century now. But one thing about The Dark Knight that I don’t hear mentioned all that much anymore is that it wasn’t Nolan’s first go-around with the character. Everything that was paid off in that film was set up, three years earlier, in the director’s first attempt at tackling a superhero story, Batman Begins. Not only was this movie successful enough at the box office to spawn a very well funded sequel, but it’s the film that’s actually responsible for bringing us Nolan’s grounded and relatable vision of the character. This was the film that revitalized a property whose big screen potential had been tarnished, and it gets treated like it doesn’t even exist when fans gush over their love

Part of the appeal of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films is that the basic conceit informing their aesthetic seems so natural. Batman is one of few major superheroes that isn’t actually a super-hero. Batman mythology, then, lends itself to a degree of plausibility more than, say, Superman or Spider-Man, so why not manifest a vision of Batman that embraces this particular aspect that distinguishes this character from most superhero mythologies? But realism has not been a characteristic that unifies Batman’s many representations in the moving image. Through the eyes of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, the Batman of tentpole studio filmmaking has occupied either a world of gothic architecture and shadowy noir, or one of schizophrenic camp. From 1989 to 1997, Batman was interpreted by visionary directors with potent aesthetic approaches, but approaches that did not necessarily aim to root the character within a landscape of exhaustive Nolanesque plausibility.

The weight on Christopher Nolan’s shoulders coming into The Dark Knight Rises was roughly equivalent to a skyscraper with an elephant on top. He knocked The Dark Knight out of the park (and out of the city limits), so the anticipation and expectations for the follow-up seemed so high that it was difficult to imagine anyone leaping over the bar. But this is Nolan – a director who should get his own Wheaties box. Audiences still have a while to wait before passing judgment, but early reviews are in, and the consensus is that the film demolishes those high expectations along with Gotham. Here’s a quick recap of what critics are saying so far:

Enduring cultural figures like Batman endure precisely because of the slight but notable changes they incur over time. Batman has had a long history in the moving image, and while the character has maintained both the central conceit of being a crime-fighting detective, the cinematic Batman of seventy years ago bears little resemblance to the Batman we’re familiar with today. The character and his myth have been interpreted with variation by a multitude of creative persons other than Bob Kane and Bill Finger. In the moving image, Batman has been embodied by a range of actors including Robert Lowery, Adam West, and George Clooney, and Batman has been realized by directors and showrunners prone to various tastes and aesthetic interpretations like William Dozier and Christopher Nolan. While Batman is perhaps best-known by a non-comic-astute mass culture through the many blockbuster feature films made about him, including this summer’s hotly anticipated The Dark Knight Rises, the character’s cinematic origins are rooted in the long-dead format of the movie serial. Batman first leapt off the page in a 15-part serial made in 1943 titled Batman and another six years later titled Batman and Robin. These serials did not influence Batman’s later cinematic iterations realized by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher as much as they inspired Batman’s representation on television. Batman’s presence in film serials and on television have had a decisive and important impact in terms of how mass audiences perceive the Batman of feature films. At the same time, these serials

Look, everyone. Let’s be honest. From here on out it’s going to be all The Dark Knight Rises, all the time. A few foreign films might slip into the mix, and some sort of Asian Film Festival in New York might end up on the radar, but for the most part everyone will be writing about Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming trilogy cap forever and ever and ever for the next two weeks. That being said, Wired has crafted a must-read article on how Nolan’s vision has been brought to masterful life. It features Nolan, co-writer Jonathan Nolan, and the stars of the film weighing in on various aspects of production, but the most interesting note might be where the story was really born from: Dickensian England. Jonathan Nolan claims that the goal was to see Gotham truly destroyed, and the best place to look for a story of total. shocking destruction in a modern city was the classic you were forced to read in high school, ”A Tale of Two Cities.” 

Speaking specifically about the success that Christopher Nolan‘s Batman movies have earned, and the secret behind why The Dark Knight Rises works, Michael Caine recently pointed to the real stunt work, practical effects, and minimal computer manipulation that went into the production. “For me, it was incredible because the great thing about it was – and the secret of the success of this picture as opposed to those massive blockbusters out there – is the stunts and special effects are real. There is very, very little computer generated imaging in it. All these other ones you see a million people marching towards you, you know they’ve photographed ten and just kept doubling it up and up and up. In ours, when the stuntman falls off the roof, it’s a real man falling off the roof and hitting the bottom.And I think that is very important. It’s very human and I suppose the class of acting is a little better… For a start both Batman and the butler are Oscar-winners! (laughs). Gary Oldman, who’s the chief of police, nearly became one himself, do you see what I mean? So it’s a very high standard of acting, and a very high standard of reality. That’s the secret of that series, for me.” Funny. It all sort of boils down to having a huge human factor involved in a massive movie. I wonder if any studios are paying attention, because Caine just nailed it. [Empire]  

After a decade of marketing materials for The Dark Knight Rises, some excellent and some bland, the IMAX poster for Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming Batman movie finally reveals its true nature: epic and terrifyingly God-like. No more hiding what it is, this poster is distilled hubris. The kind of one sheet that will slap you in the face and then sleep with a beloved family member. Fair warning – it already melted Ronald Lacey’s face, so be careful: