Never before has the British director Christopher Nolan been on the crest of a wave more than in the last two years. After the mass delirium unleashed by the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, which saw his "Oppenheimer" and Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" compete for the scepter of best result at the summer box office, the awards achieved first at the Golden Globes and subsequently at the Oscars - with seven statuettes including the one for the best film - have definitively projected the filmmaker onto the Olympus of the most accredited filmmakers of recent years.

But even before the exceptional response he had with his latest film, we know well how much Nolan contributed to making the seventh art great, from his debut with the unusual "Memento" to the more futuristic and dreamlike "Inception". The explosion of notoriety, however, came from the successful Batman trilogy which reached the peak of success with the second episode entitled "The Dark Knight" , remembered among other things for the actor's last, great performance Heath Ledger as Joker. Of the three films, the most difficult to make was certainly the third, and Nolan himself confirms this.

In Tom Shone's book "The Nolan Variations" we discover his lack of propensity to return with sequels to franchises he has already explored in the past, even more so with regard to the threequels.

From his statement, specifically addressed to the third episode of Batman, we discover that: «There are no good third sequels, perhaps only Rocky III. But they are very difficult. So my instinct told me to change gender. The first film was an origin story. The second is a crime drama very similar to Heat, and the third has to be something great, because you can't go back. The public doesn't give you a choice, you can't go back to doing what you've already done before. So you have to change genre. We went for the historical epic, the disaster movie, The Crystal Inferno meets Doctor Zhivago."

Certainly at the time the box office result was surprising, considering the nature of the threequel. Having exceeded one billion dollars in takings in 2012, even the opinions of the press on "The Dark Knight Rises" were not at all harsh, with a score on Rotten Tomatoes still today of 87% approval. Even the choice of the villain, after the appreciation received with Ledger's Joker, was certainly not simple: initially the option fell on the Riddler, but to give life to a post-apocalyptic scenario, Bane was certainly the most suitable choice: «We discussed it for a long time. Bane was born out of a conversation with David Goyer and Chris. I wasn't sure when we were thinking about the story to tell. But Chris understood that what we had done and what Heath Ledger had done with Joker would not be even remotely repeatable. I started thinking about the Riddler and what we could do with that character. But it seemed too close to the Joker's area of action and we really needed to change direction. One of the things that excited me was the idea of making a post-apocalyptic film. Batman always saves the day and the city survives. Why can't we destroy Gotham and see what happens next?"

Among other things, it is equally known that at the time of "The Dark Knight" Nolan was rather reluctant to accept the project, for fear of ending up labeled in the eyes of the public as a superhero director. Last month, during an interview on the "Armchair Expert" podcast with Dax Shepard, brother Jonathan Nolan revealed that it took some time to convince Christopher to take on the project.

In fact, from his story we discover: «Chris was undecided whether to make another one, he didn't want to become a director of superhero films. I was sitting with Charles Roven and Chris and I was saying: don't be such a dick, let's do it! And I knew with the script it was like the first act detailed, the second act a little less detailed, the third act… um, where he's running away at the end. Once I had the script ready, I thought: this is going to be amazing, this is exciting, we have to make this movie. And in the end he changed his mind and managed not to be labeled."

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