The Dark Knight Trilogy Ultimate Collector's Edition: Christopher Nolan's Letter

Included as part of the new box set from Warner Bros. Home Video, filmmaker Christopher Nolan wrote a one-page introduction to The Dark Knight Trilogy Ultimate Collector's Edition. It grapples with his feelings over taking the job, what he aimed to do and more. And since only about 141,000 people are going to own one of the limited-edition box sets, we felt like it was something worth sharing with our readers. It's been ten years since I walked out of Alan Horn's office holding the keys to one of Warner Bros.' most prized assets. I never stopped to wonder why they'd entrusted something so important to someone so inexperienced - if I had, I'd have been paralyzed with self-doubt. In retrospect, it can only have been my absolute confidence that a return to the old school 70s blockbusters that I grew up with would be the key to bringing Batman back. I thought my references were original, but it now seems obvious that ten years ago every studio had been hoping that every tentpole they made would take the audience back to the great early days of Spielberg, Lucas and Bond (outsize Bond). Few movies had pushed that particular button, and I believed that changes to the craft of filmmaking were to blame. I put together a team of the best technicians in the world to test my theory, and we tested it more and more with each new installment, shamelessly pillaging the stunt and special effects techniques of movies we'd loved in the hope of combining them into something fresh for the audience. In the early days, we never dared whisper the word "trilogy," but I think we all knew that if we worked as hard as we could, for something that we truly believed in, the opportunity to build a grand, three-act narrative would be there. The studio was patient in a way that studios rarely are - the three years between the first two installments, then a further four until our conclusion. The Batman thrives on continual reinterpretation, but I hope that the work of these three movies is ambitious and cohesive enough to stand the test of time as a distinct and notable interpretation of the great icon. The story you have here is a story close to the hearts of myself and my collaborators - we tried hard to do justice to the shadowy figure at the dark heart of The Dark Knight Trilogy. Hopefully, we succeeded.