Review | The Dark Knight film trilogy review: Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are three of the best superhero movies ever made

Blending gritty realism with an epic sense of scale, the trilogy is held together by Christian Bale’s layered portrayal of Bruce Wayne as a reluctant Batman

The Dark Knight’s US$1 billion box office take, eight Academy Award nominations and posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger helped legitimise the superhero genre

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Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in a scene from The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The Batman films by director Christopher Nolan are three of the best superhero movies ever made. Photo: Ron Phillips

Published: 4:00am, 4 Jun 2020Updated: 9:23pm, 5 Jun 2020

5/5 stars

Fifteen years after the release of Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy – universally celebrated at the time for the films’ gritty realism and epic sense of scale – returns to the big screen to entice Hong Kong audiences back into cinemas.

It’s a chance to revisit three of the most accomplished superhero films ever made, and on the giant IMAX screens for which they were originally filmed. Nolan’s grand operatic sensibility imbues DC Comics characters with an almost Shakespearean sense of duty, fate, and impending tragedy.

The Dark Knight alone, released in 2008 just weeks after Iron Man unwittingly launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, would forever change Hollywood’s attitude towards superheroes on film. Its US$1 billion haul at the box office, and posthumous Oscar win for Heath Ledger’s brilliantly deranged Joker, legitimised the genre in the eyes of a notoriously conservative establishment.

The Dark Knight’s eight Academy Award nominations paved the way for Black Panther ’s subsequent best picture Oscar nomination – and three statuettes – in 2019, and Joaquin Phoenix’s best actor Oscar this year for his very different take on the psychotic character in Joker .

Nolan has never been one to let narrative logic stand in the way of visual spectacle, but he nevertheless grounded the character of Bruce Wayne, and his rogues’ gallery of eccentric villains, in a recognisable reality.