Christopher Nolan turned the Batman movies into an Oscar winning franchise, and Aaron Eckhart, who played Harvey Dent/Two-Face in Nolan's The Dark Knight, is pretty sure that this is not the end of the line for Nolan-based Batman movies.
Eckhart was recently on the Keepin' It Reel podcast to talk about his new movie Erased, and during the course of the discussion, Eckhart also talked about his experience of working with Nolan and had some advice for what Warner Brothers should do about the post-Nolan era.
“I mean, look,” he states, “Iron Man is so successful and the tone of Iron Man is completely different than the Nolan Batman series. They're both very successful, right? And both entertaining. You could take Batman that way. You know Chris (Nolan) has done such hard work and created this tone, and Christian (Bale) has, and Heath (Ledger) and everyone who's been in these movies. I'd hate to see it be trivialized.”
Eckhart feels that Batman is special because it’s one of the last comic books, or the only comic book, that's truly deals with relevant issues. “I mean when I read The Dark Knight I go, 'this is a comic book movie? This is insane.' I mean you're talking about a city that's being taken over by corrupt forces and nobody will stand up for good, for decency and humanity and nobody can walk to the streets at night, he added. “Who wants to live in that city?”
“And do the people really have to be vigilantes to set things right? I mean serious issues and it wasn't tongue in cheek. And that's where Heath was just so amazing. You know I said to Gary (Oldman), 'You know Gary how do you act in one of these things, what's the tone of it?' And that's a conversation I had with Chris.”
Eckhart reveals that the way Heath Ledger took his role as the Joker “deadly serious," and that Eckhart felt privileged to have been a part of that, “and I would hate to lose that because everybody who comes up to me on the street all over the world, the thing that they inevitably say about The Dark Knight is that it's about something, it's serious, it resonates with them.”
He was pretty sure that this wouldn’t be the last time that Christopher Nolan would be working with the Dark Knight franchise. “I can't see Chris ever letting go of this movie.”
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