What A Wonderful Knight

The moody, brooding The Dark Knight is not your common-or-garden Batman sequel. Director Christopher Nolan has taken the film into much darker territory than you might expect, adding cleverly nuanced layer after cleverly nuanced layer. Even so, it's refreshing to learn that even the serious Nolan liked the action.

"I got to destroy a building!" he exclaims, when asked about his favourite part of the film. "I got to flip a truck!"

It's a question Nolan's cast is also keen to answer.

"For me, it's a line I get," adds Michael Caine, who reprises his role as Bruce Wayne's right hand man, Alfred. "I'm talking to Batman about the Joker and I say: 'Some men just like to watch the world burn.'"

Christian Bale sighs. "Now that Michael's said that, I feel I have to say it's the same scene. If I don't, it's like I didn't enjoy it as much..." He laughs.

The film itself has picked up exceptional levels of praise, in particular for Nolan and, inevitably, the late Heath Ledger who plays The Joker. However, Nolan didn't anticipate the biggest box office opening weekend in cinema history.

"We're very surprised, very excited," adds Nolan, referring to the opening weekend. "When you do a film of this of size you take on a responsibility to reach a wide audience. We've been given incredible support by the studio, so it's important to me that we do well enough but the level of success this weekend has been far beyond what I hoped."

"I've never been involved with anything like this," chips in Aaron Eckhart, who plays Harvey Dent. "But I'm enjoying it, I have to say!"

Maggie Gyllenhall agrees. "When I first started making movies, I didn't really care if anybody saw them. I just thought I like this, I don't care if anybody else does. Now I realise that I don't want to make movies for the ten people who feel exactly the same way about the world I do. I want to make movies that people see! I'm really glad it made a lot of money!"

Not as glad though as Christian Bale. "I've been referred to as 'Box Office Poison' quite a lot so it's nice!"

"I thought it would do well, from reading the script," adds Caine. "Then I saw the completed movie and I thought, 'oh, there's something very special here' and it's going to make more money than any film I've ever made. In fact, it's made more money than any THREE movies I've ever made..."

Interestingly, Nolan doesn't see the film as a superhero movie: "I never viewed this as a superhero film. I thought if we were we'd be in trouble: this is the fifth comic book derived 'superhero' movie of the summer. But what the source material is isn't necessarily relevant to what the film will actually be." However, he cheerfully acknowledges that the recent graphic novels, and their darker tone, were inspirational in finding a new direction.

While Bale won't be drawn on the new direction, he is certainly happy to discuss the new improved Bat Suit which allows a lot more upper body movement.

"It was so much nicer than the first one. It had always been a desire of Chris's to improve it – without having to wear the damn thing! Just to have a little bit more motion was much easier. In the first film's fight scenes I had to fight against the suit to fight in it. But the new one breathed better, I could breathe better. It was actualy heavier but it didn 't feel that way. I could do more, I could stay in it longer."

"And," adds Caine with a grin, "it was easier to press..."

Finally, inevitably, there's one question on everyone's lips. Will there be a third? Nolan has no idea.

"The truth is we finished working on this three, four weeeks ago. We've put everything we wanted to see in this and I have no idea what I want to do in the furture." He smiles. "I just wan to go on holiday."

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