Nolan: “There were no reboots before Batman Begins”

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 on the current reboot climate, but he sounded murkier than he probably first intended.

“It’s a sEsports Extrasof how fast things change in the world of cinema, but conceptually, the concept of a ‘reboot’ didn’t exist before. That idea didn’t exist when I started working on Batman. That’s new terminology. Warner Bros. owned this wonderful character and didn’t know what to do with him, he had hit a dead end with his previous iteration.

If you look at what Tim Burton did, it’s specifically about a world that was created that Batman fits into. It’s this grand gothic vision that’s very consistent, and consistent with the character of Batman. What I felt like I hadn’t seen, especially in the comics, was an ordinary world that we could be living in in Gotham. When a Gothamite sees Batman, he is just as extraordinary as he would be in our world. He wanted an extraordinary character in the background of an ordinary world. That’s not what Tim did, so I thought it was another direction.”

If we try to quickly remember the most notable reboots in the world of cinema before Nolan made Batman Begins, the following titles are some of the ones that come to mind: The Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, Godzilla, Planet of the Apes, Jack Ryan, Superman, King Kong and many more. Now, maybe they wouldn’t be called “reboots” in the same way that they would be called if they were released today, what do you think?