There’s a little-known fourth film in Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman, and it’s actually even better than The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan created three of the best superhero movies ever with his Batman trilogy: Batman Begins in 2005, The Dark Knight in 2008, and The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. The Dark Knight, in particular, is widely credited as the best Batman movie ever made and even one of the best movies ever in general.
The thing is, Nolan’s take on Batman inspired a spinoff film that can be considered the fourth movie in the Dark Knight franchise. The in-betweequel doesn’t get nearly as much recognition as the other chapters in the series, but it’s arguably even better than The Dark Knight. A big reason it’s so often overlooked is that it was an animated anthology that took place between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and because Nolan only consulted on the film instead of being directly involved.
Released in 2008, Batman: Gotham Knight features six different but interconnected Batman stories animated by Japanese and South Korean animation studios. Each of the six tales tells a different story from Bruce Wayne’s earliest days as Batman, just after the events of Batman Begins. The segments are all loosely connected and chronicle Batman’s efforts to take down Gotham’s organized crime as well as villains like Scarecrow, Killer Croc, and Deadshot. Most importantly, it has a few significant advantages over The Dark Knight.
Batman: Gotham Knight Blends Christopher Nolan’s Realism With Comic Book Accuracy & Beautiful Animation
The beauty of Batman: Gotham Knight is that it combines two of the absolute best aspects of both The Dark Knight and most of the Batman comic books: grounded and gritty realism and a larger-than-life quality about the character. Like The Dark Knight, Gotham Knight is a very realistic story. Bruce gets hurt, he doesn’t perform any impossible feats of strength, and even his villains are fairly realistic. Most of the movie follows Bruce fighting the mob, and everything about it feels grounded and plausible.
Batman: Gotham Knight also, however, dares to go a bit bigger than The Dark Knight did. It dives further into Batman’s source material, bringing more outlandish villains like Killer Croc and Deadshot to life. The film also dives heavily into Batman’s reputation as a stalker of the night and a fearsome protector of Gotham. Gotham Knight even plays around with perspective and memory, taking more risks than The Dark Knight ever did.
Both of these elements, the realism and the legend, come together in Batman: Gotham Knight‘s animation style. All six segments have a clear layer of grime to them, as was the style in 2008. Everything from the characters to Gotham itself feels real and lived-in, which brings it aesthetically in line with The Dark Knight trilogy as a whole. Gotham Knight also, however, has more than enough beauty to elevate the movie beyond mere realism.
Each shot of Gotham Knight feels like a panel straight out of a comic book. So much care and creativity went into every single frame of this film, and the sheer passion the various animation studios had for Batman and for the story Christopher Nolan was telling drips through every second. Batman: Gotham Knight is a visual marvel, which is really just the cherry on top of an already fantastic Batman film.
Batman: Gotham Knight Is A Better Batman Movie Than The Dark Knight Is
What really sets Batman: Gotham Knight apart and makes it better than The Dark Knight is the fact that it’s simply a better Batman movie. There are only a handful of movies in general that can legitimately claim they’re better than The Dark Knight. The movie is great from top to bottom, and it only has a handful of easy-to-ignor flaws. That being said, while The Dark Knight is a masterpiece, it’s not the best Batman movie out there.
Christopher Nolan’s dedication to grounding Batman and the more outlandish aspects of a comic book superhero worked tremendously well to make The Dark Knight a great action movie, but it somewhat undermined the film as a Batman movie. Batman is a larger-than-life figure, and his exploits are larger than life as well. Batman: Gotham Knight understands this core feature of Batman as a character, and it’s much more faithful to Batman as a result.
The secret fourth movie in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series is exactly how a new movie should be made without ruining the trilogy’s legacy.
The Dark Knight trilogy touched on Bruce’s mental status, his reasoning for becoming Batman, and how Gotham viewed Batman, but it wasn’t really the focus of any of the movies. Batman: Gotham Knight, however, tackled these issues head-on, and it gave Batman fans one of the most complete and faithful understandings of the character that has ever been put to screen.
Batman: Gotham Knight feels like a much better representation of what Batman is than The Dark Knight did. Some of the film’s shorts, particularly Have I Got a Story for You and Crossfire, give a glimpse into how the average people of Gotham view Batman. It also dives deep into what really drives Bruce, the willpower required to be Batman, and the utter devotion he has to Gotham and its people. As far as Batman movies go, few are better than Batman: Gotham Knight.
- Release Date
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July 8, 2008
- Runtime
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75 minutes
- Director
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Yasuhiro Aoki, Yuichiro Hayashi, Futoshi Higashide, Toshiyuki Kubooka, Hiroshi Morioka, Jong-Sik Nam
- Writers
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Bob Kane, Josh Olson, Jordan Goldberg, Greg Rucka, Brian Azzarello, Alan Burnett
- Producers
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Benjamin Melniker, Bruce Timm, Emma Thomas
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Thomas Wayne / Cop / Doctor / Youth 2 (voice)
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Jason Marsden
Batman / Bruce Wayne (voice)
