There are seemingly infinite possible directions for any Batman story to go, so it takes careful screenwriters to hone the perfect movie script from the wealth of material available. Writers David Goyer and Jonathan Nolan (Jonah for short) told a version of the Joker/Harvey Dent stories that follow where Batman Begins left off. Though Goyer has many comic book projects in the works, he was all Batman today.
Crave Online: How did you decide on the jumping off point for this story?
David Goyer: Well, the jumping off point was the last scene in Batman Begins. We knew we were going to tell a story about escalation, and we knew we were going to tell a story about The Joker. We didn't know going into it that we were going to bring in Harvey Dent. That was sort of debated for a while. Then we started from that point and then we went back again and re-read every single comic involving The Joker. Then my experience with Chris has always been, you start off, it's just kind of like a big, sprawling debate where it's a free for all. In the beginning though it was just Chris was saying, "Convince me we should even do another one." So just internally it was just this debate about because he didn't want to do another one unless he felt we could really top it, and there was a story that was worth telling. I think there was an initial week where it was just, is this a story worthy of telling again.
Crave Online: You have fun foreshadowing things either in this film or from the Batman universe as a whole. How far can you push that and how much fun can you have with that?
David Goyer: To the extent that many of those things are in there, I think they're just kind of grace notes or you know winks at the audience. Trust me, I've not had a single conversation really with Chris about doing another one. It's not like we're planting Easter eggs for another one. Chris doesn't approach things that way. He's just one movie at a time. I like to say I think it was three or four months before Batman Begins had already been in theaters that Chris called me up and said, "Let's have lunch and talk about another one." It was a while so we're definitely not at that point for another one.
Crave Online: What inspiration do you take from the different writers and artists who have done Batman comics? Obviously there's a lot of Frank Miller in here.
Jonah Nolan: It picks up a little bit along that. One of the cool things about working in this property, in this franchise – comic books, movies, all of it – the Batman world is that you have all these amazing writers who sort of pick up the baton from the previous writer and carry it a little bit further. Loeb and Sale picked up the baton from Frank Miller, dealing with Batman in this realistic setting, sort of naturalist setting, in which the criminal sort of underworld figured as a large component or a background against which the story plays out, which is enormously appealing, I think, to us.
David Goyer: The Gotham City that exists in these movies isn't realistic either. I mean, every time you see a big wide establishing shot of Gotham City it's been augmented. But I think the approach on these movies is to try to depict Batman's story more realistically. That was something that Miller and Alan Moore and Jeff Loeb principally over the last couple of decades had been doing.
Crave Online: Given that approach, when you go back and do your immersion in the comic book sources, are you thinking of things you could do realistically or that would be too much of a stretch?
Jonah Nolan: There are characters who would fit into this universe and characters who probably wouldn't, although it's always a fun exercise to see if you can.
David Goyer: To see if you can make them fit in. I think that when we start talking about The Joker, obviously prior to this film The Joker that most people were familiar with was the Jack Nicholson Joker, although Cesar Romero when I was growing up was The Joker. But it became immediately apparent that the Jack Nicholson version couldn't inhabit this world. That he was from a total parallel universe so we had to do something different.
Jonah Nolan: I always feel like we're approaching it from the sense of you have this Batman world and you have a different lens to look into. Chris's lens is through this idea of realism but to me the idea is to look consistent in the universe.
Crave Online: Purely hypothetically, just for the fanboys, could you foresee a way to incorporate a character like Robin into this world?
David Goyer: We're not going to answer that question.
Crave Online: Why not?
David Goyer: Because A) we haven't talked about it. B) I don't want to speculate. It's up to Chris to decide if he wants to go down that path again. If he invites us along, great, and we'll kind of deal with it then.
Crave Online: Are you looking forward or are you prepared to make that argument: should we do another one?
David Goyer: I think we'd both to do another one. I don't think I could see beyond that.
Jonah Nolan: But the challenge again is that the mandate from Chris is it always has to be better.
David Goyer: How do you make it better? And we set the bar with Batman Begins and I think this one sets it even higher so it's scary.
Crave Online: Did the studio pressure you to keep The Joker alive at the end?
Jonah Nolan: Hell no. The idea to me, I mean, really one of the things that hopefully we accomplished with this film is put some words on the paradoxical relationship of Batman and The Joker. Batman won't kill The Joker because he has a set of ideals that he's used to. He won't take a life and I think the idea that's been there latent, it's latent in the comics and we're sort of feeding it into this, is the idea that The Joker won't kill Batman because he's too much fun. These guys are going to keep going. The words in the film are "an unstoppable force and an unmovable object." It's a paradoxical relationship and I think to me that got to the sort of core of it better than, "Oh, let's just kill him."
David Goyer: I think Warner Bros would have, I mean it didn't make sense but I think they would have supported [us]. The nice thing about it, having done the first one, is that they really, primarily through Chris, I think if we had said, "The Joker has to bite it," they might have said, "Well, why do you think that?" But I think they would have…
Jonah Nolan: Made the case. Hugely supportive in these movies.
Crave Online: Why did you decide not to do a Joker origin story but to play with the idea that he's got a multiple choice kind of history?
David Goyer: I think if we had done an origin story, you guys would not have liked the character as much. I mean, I think the whole thing that makes him fascinating is that he remains this enigma. If we had told an origin story, we would have completely demystified the character. That was what was instantly appealing about him. I think that a lot of people assumed we're doing a second film so we're going to do The Joker's origin story, and I think from the very beginning we just said no.
Jonah Nolan: I just think the character's more interesting when he's elemental. Any kind of backstory to him in this universe would feel… It's funny, you said demystifying. On the other hand, the character almost has no mystery. He just presents. There's nothing in his pockets but knives and lint. There's no ID card, there's no fingerprints. He's more of an elemental force. It kind of pleases me to think that that first shot you have of him standing on the street corner, it's almost like he appeared out of thin air.
Crave Online: What did you think of both Christian and Heath's interpretations of your characters?
David Goyer: We thought it was good. [Laughs] I was only on the set for a limited time, and I was never there when Heath happened to be there so I can't speak to that other than just watching the movie, just like the rest of you. I was completely blown away by what he did but blown away by what everyone did. I think Aaron Eckhart did an amazing job as well.
Jonah Nolan: Yeah. We got really lucky with this film.
Crave Online: How do you divide the work?
David Goyer: I worked with Chris for about a month, and Chris and I wrote a treatment together with the beats of the story. Then we gave that to Jonathan and he did, I don't know how many drafts you did.
Jonah Nolan: I don't know either. These guys gave me a really substantial outline. They really figured the story out, so for me it was a pretty straight ahead job of just taking it and building it out into the world. Chris always takes the last pass of the scripts before he goes into production. He'll sort of shepherd the script into production, so for us the job is kind of done.
Crave Online: Does he change the dialogue?
Jonah Nolan: The script is always an evolutionary process to it. Chris has a confidence where he can play around with things a little bit as he gets into the production, but for the most part he wants to have it nailed away before they start to film.
Crave Online: David, where are you with Magneto?
Publicist: Not talking about it.
Crave Online: Having so much comic book history, do you have to turn off the part of your brain that knows every little minutia about a character like Batman or anyone you're working on and figure out what's good for this one story?
David Goyer: That's a good question because it's true. I mean, I think to a certain extent one aspect of working on this that was easier was we had a universe in Batman Begins that existed now. So we had the mirror kind of to shine things up against. Does this jibe with the Batman Begins universe or not? So it became pretty obvious like when we were calling from the comic books and things like that, we could see this playing out in that universe. If the Joker poisons the supplies of the fishes so they have Joker smiles, that just didn't work in that universe.
Crave Online: I used to get sh*t just for reading both DC and Marvel. How do you work for both companies?
David Goyer: Sometimes those companies give me shit. They do. They're like, "Why are you doing that DC thing again?"
Crave Online: What about the territorial fans?
David Goyer: Sure. The truth is actually going back, even to the '60s, Marvel really emerged in the '60s, but there's always been a crosspollination between the writers and artists. I mean, Jack Kirby worked for both companies. Frank Miller's worked for both companies. People migrate back and forth all the time.
Crave Online: What part of this was the most satisfying?
Jonah Nolan: It's a tough question because there are so many satisfying things on a film like this, but our job was a little unusual in that it's a collaborative medium but we're also working well in advance of everyone coming on board.
David Goyer: Yeah. We worked years ago.
Jonah Nolan: I did most of my work in 2005, 2006. There's this kind of waiting game where you're waiting to see what comes out the other side. I think to me the completed picture is enormously satisfying, when it's all working as it does, as it seems to be from my perspective in this film.
Crave Online: With everything on your plate, would you be interested in doing a Batman comic book story?
David Goyer: I don't know. DC's talked to me about it before. I don't know. It's this weird thing because I've written comic books, and I'd like to write some comic books again. But part of me's like, "Well, how could we top what we're doing in the movies?" I don't know. I'm not sure.
