The NYTimes have posted a very inter­est­ing Dark Knight report which closely fol­lows Chris Nolan’s work as direc­tor. It is a must read, even if the minor plot spoil­ers in the first para­graph would put you off. I’ve included some choice excerpts for you below, along with the new images that fea­ture in the article.

In so many ways this isn’t what you’d expect of a $180 mil­lion Hol­ly­wood comic-book movie sequel with a zil­lion mov­ing parts, a cast of thou­sands and sets from here to Hong Kong. Any­one else would shoot indoors, use dig­i­tal effects or wait for clear skies; Mr. Nolan rolls with the weather’s punches, believ­ing that the messi­ness of real­ity can’t be faked. Another film­maker would leave a shot like this in the hands of a second-unit direc­tor, but Mr. Nolan doesn’t use one; if it’s on the screen, he directed it, and his long­time cin­e­matog­ra­pher, Wally Pfis­ter, worked the cam­era. Stars on any other movie would have fled to their trail­ers to wait in com­fort until needed again. Here, Gary Old­man is watch­ing and shiv­er­ing along with every­body else, crack­ing jokes to keep warm.

[…]

Now the ques­tion is whether Mr. Nolan’s vision of Bat­man can not only main­tain its hold on the imag­i­na­tions of comic fans and crit­ics, but expand its reach to a wider sum­mer moviego­ing audi­ence, even as the death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” has added unan­tic­i­pated mor­bid­ity to the film’s delib­er­ate darkness.

[…]

“As we looked through the comics, there was this fas­ci­nat­ing idea that Batman’s pres­ence in Gotham actu­ally attracts crim­i­nals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,” he said. “When you’re deal­ing with ques­tion­able notions like peo­ple tak­ing the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the char­ac­ter so dark, because he expresses a venge­ful desire.”

[…]

Will Mr. Ledger’s death cast a pall over “The Dark Knight,” whose tragic plot turns already make it much darker than “Bat­man Begins”? “We’ll see,” said Mr. Robi­nov, of Warner Broth­ers. Mr. Nolan, for his part, said he felt a “mas­sive sense of respon­si­bil­ity” to do right by Mr. Ledger’s “ter­ri­fy­ing, amaz­ing” performance.