Fans of the Caped Crusader, brace yourselves for some bad news. Next month, the most popular streaming platform will eliminate all of Christopher Nolan’sBatmanfilms from its library. This means you have just ten days to catch up on thebest superhero trilogyever made—before the release of the latest movie centered around DC’sothermain superhero,Superman.
Starting Jun. 1, Netflix will remove from its library the threeDark Knightfilms directed by Academy Award-winner Christopher Nolan.Batman Begins(2005),The Dark Knight(2008), andThe Dark Knight Rises(2012) are the three movies in Nolan’s superhero trilogy which redefined the landscape of the genre in the mid-2000s. Back then, the MCU was still in diapers.Iron Man, the first in the Marvel mega-franchise, would not be released until 2008, the same year Heath Ledger proved that superhero films could also be terrifying, thanks to hisgroundbreaking performanceas the Joker.
Christopher Nolan’s Highest-Grossing Movies, Ranked by Box Office Earnings
Christopher Nolan is widely considered to be one of the best filmmakers working today, though not all of his films have been box office hits.
All of Nolan’s Batman films were acclaimed by critics upon release, and today, they’re still regarded as the best of the best in the genre. The three movies are Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, boasting impressive scores from both critics (Tomatometer) and audiences (Popcornmeter):
The three films were box office hits.Batman Beginsmade over $373 million, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.The Dark Knightblew up the box office, making $1 billion and becoming the highest-grossing film of that year. It was also nominated for eight Oscars, and it won in the Best Sound Editing and Best Supporting Actor (Ledger) categories. It’s widely considered to be the best superhero film ever made.The Dark Knight Riseswas the most successful of them all, grossing $1.08 billion at the global box office. Nevertheless, it was the only one in the trilogy that didn’t get recognized at the Academy Awards.
How the ‘Dark Knight’ Trilogy Changed Superhero Movies Forever
Before Christopher Nolan reformulated the superhero genre, there simply weren’t as many superhero films. Richard Donner’sSuperman, Tim Burton’sBatmanand Sam Raimi’sSpider-Manwere iterations that most didn’t consider to be “serious” movies. They were “comic book movies,” and while they were remarkable adaptations, they lacked the depth Nolan managed to capture—something that seemed tocaptivate critics like Roger Ebert.
The Chicago Sun-Times critic was very vocal aboutBatman Begins, and gave the film four stars:“I said this is the Batman movie I’ve been waiting for; more correctly, this is the movie I did not realize I was waiting for, because I didn’t realize that more emphasis on story and character and less emphasis on high-tech action was just what was needed. The movie works dramatically in addition to being an entertainment. There’s something to it.”
He was also enamored withThe Dark Knight, giving it four stars:
“Batman isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’sThe Dark Knightis a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production.”
Ebert was less enthusiastic aboutThe Dark Knight Rises, to which he only gave three stars out of four: “It isn’t very much fun, and it doesn’t have very much Batman. I’m thinking of the over-the-top action sequences of the earlier films that had a subcurrent of humor, and the exhilarating performance of Heath Ledger as the Joker. This movie is all serious drama, with a villain named Bane whose Hannibal Lecterish face-muzzle robs him of personality.”
Source:What’s on Netflix
The Dark Knight
