Fans of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy may have noticed some similarities with Michael Mann’s Heat, an urban crime film starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Both the director and his brother, Jonathan Nolan, admitted getting some inspiration from the classic 1995 movie.
Avid viewers may have noticed the parallels between The Dark Knight and Heat, mostly in the grounded storylines and the love for urban landscapes. Evidently, as a master of the craft, Mann greatly influenced the Nolan brothers.
Jonathan Nolan Talks About Michael Mann’s Heat And The Dark Knight
While speaking with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Jonathan Nolan shared how he came up with the script for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The latter initially was hesitant to make a follow-up movie, but inspiration happened when they both saw Michael Mann’s Heat.
“Second film was a genre shift into urban crime film, and that, to me, was so exciting to take the same characters, the same act, the same story but shift it now into something that was more in the mold of, and I remember, I didn’t see it with Chris, but we did see it the same year when Michael Mann’s film ‘Heat’ came out.”
Nolan described how Heat left an impact on him where the story had this roller coaster of emotions.
“That movie made such an impression on me. You had this fully naturalistic world, and by the end, it’s a Greek opera, and it’s a bit of a magic trick with Michael Mann.”
He felt the need to recapture the same feeling and incorporate it into The Dark Knight, which became his guide while drafting the script.
“You sort of concurrently looking at that and feeling: Could you bring that feeling into the Batman Universe? Could you tell a story in that key? And that, to me, that early draft for me was a bit of a ‘this is what I think a Batman movie should be.’ ”
The Dark Knight ended up conquering the box office with over $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales against a budget of $185 million.
Christopher Nolan Is A Huge Fan Of Michael Mann’s Creative Direction
Christopher Nolan spoke with GQ and confessed his admiration for Michael Mann’s Heat. He admitted using this as inspiration for his Batman movies.
“One of the biggest epic films I have ever seen is Michael Mann’s Heat. That is a true Los Angeles story, just wall-to-wall within the city. We’re going to shoot in a real city, with real streets and real buildings, because the scale of that can be massive. Heat was very much an influence, because Mann is a fanatic for architecture, too; he understands the grandeur of a city and how it can become a kind of epic playground.”
It’s clear that the famed Al Pacino and Robert De Niro film made a huge cultural impact not only on the Nolan brothers but also on the audience who have seen both The Dark Knight trilogy and Heat.
