Delusions of grandeur or poor choice of words? We guess we all know what director Christopher Nolan was referring to when he recently commented on Filmcomment.com about the current reboot climate, but it sounded murkier than he probably originally anticipated.
“It’s a sign of how quickly things change in the film world, but conceptually there was no concept of a ‘reboot’ before. That idea didn’t exist when I started working about Batman. It’s a new terminology. Warner Bros. wonderful character and didn’t know what to do with him, he hit a dead end with his previous iteration.
If you look at what Tim Burton has done, it’s specifically a created world that Batman fits into. It’s this great gothic vision that is very cohesive and consistent with the character of Batman. What I felt like I hadn’t seen, especially in the comics, was an ordinary world we could live in in Gotham. When a Gothamite sees Batman, he’s just as amazing as he would be in our world. I wanted an extraordinary character against the backdrop of an ordinary world. That’s not what Tim did, so I thought it was another direction.”
If we try to quickly recall the most significant reboots in the world of cinema before Nolan directed Batman Begins, the following titles are among those that come to mind: The Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, Godzilla, The Planet Monkeys, Jack Ryan, Superman, King Kong and many more. Now, maybe they wouldn’t be called “reboots” the same way they would be called if they were released today, what do you think?