The Nolan Effect

The Nolan Effect

Superhero movies have been in full swing, especially in the 2000’s. And a lot of movies are what you call “reboots”. Reboots are when a franchise has either taken a few years off from its source material or have found an ending point in their storyline.

Reboots have become popular due to Christopher Nolan and his Batman franchise, especially reboots which go back to the origins of the story. Joel Shumacher killed the Batman franchise with the horrible Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997), so Nolan rebooted the franchise in 2005 with Batman Begins, which went back to the very beginning of the Batman Story. The Batman franchise went through most of the villains, so Nolan decided that going to Batman’s origin, would be the best option. In 2008, Nolan directed his second Batman movie, the Dark Knight and he’ll complete his planned trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises this summer.

A few franchises have been rebooted starting with Spiderman. Now, the Spiderman trilogy went from 2002 to 2007 and was highly successful. I think Spiderman (2002) set a box office record for opening weekend at the time. They were good movies and people liked them, but apparently they decided they needed a reboot. So, The Amazing Spider-Man will come out later this year. Is that necessary? Was it in need of a resurrection like Batman was? Not really, but a probable $250 million box office haul will make those questions irrelevant.

Another reboot was the Hulk Series. Hulk came out in 2003 and…was not very good. So in 2008, The Incredible Hulk came out, which was a much better movie. Necessary reboot? I think so.

There hadn’t been a Superman movie since 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (which has a 3.5/10 on IMDB). So in 2006 Superman Returns comes out. It’s not a reboot, but just a crappy sequel about 15 years too late. It was basically irrelevant, so the studio took it to another level and hired Christopher Nolan to write the script, and produce it. They realized they royally screwed up and needed the master to come and right the ship. Man of Steel will be out in 2013 and will surely have a heavy script with Nolan writing. Also, it should be visually stunning with Zak Snyder (300, Watchmen) directing.

X Men is one of the more interesting franchises regarding reboots. X Men (2000) kind of started the current run of superhero movies. That was followed up with X2 (2003) and X Men: The Last Stand (2006). X Men: The Last Stand signifies the end of a run for the franchise, and since it’s such a moneymaker, they rebooted it just three years later with X Men Origins: Wolverine which, obviously, explains the origins of Wolverine, similar to Batman Begins. Two years later X Men: First Class came out which shows the formation of the X Men from the beginning. Next, The Wolverine will come out in 2013, which apparently will be about Wolverine becoming a samurai.

The X Men franchise is funny because it rebooted itself after three years with not one, but two origins movies, and Wolverine which I guess would be considered kind of a spin off. The Deadpool character played by Ryan Reynolds will get his own movie as well, which is understandable given how many characters there are in the X Men series.

Christopher Nolan’s movies have also influenced the names of films. After Nolan named his second movie The Dark Knight, other films used original comic book titles such as The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man. For Superman, the studio turned to the nickname Man of Steel similar to The Dark Knight.

The Nolan Effect is apparent outside of superhero movies as well. James Cameron’s Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) were huge commercial and critical successes which were followed by Terminator 3 (2003). The Terminator franchise had reached its end with the third movie playing out and Arnold Schwarzenegger not signing on to do anymore movies, so in 2009 Terminator Salvation came out. Salvation is a reboot which goes back to the origins of Terminator, while taking place in the future. (If you’re familiar with Terminator you’ll understand)

Robin Hood also rebooted itself recently. Since Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991, there hasn’t been a Robin Hood movie (unless you count Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993). So, Robin Hood came out in 2010, which was also an origins story of how he became Robin Hood. He symbolically becomes Robin Hood at the end of the film where he finally fires his first arrow.

All these rehashing of characters and film franchises can be attributed to Christopher Nolan for his rebooting and origin-retelling of the Batman franchise. It’s fitting that this stems from Nolan since he is one of the most original storytellers in film. (see Inception and Memento)