Five Reasons Christopher Nolan Shouldn't Oversee Superman
We loved Memento and The Dark Knight... but we're not so sure about a dark Superman.
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The Dark Knight 
C. Robert Cargill,
Feb 16, 2010 Look, I need to say upfront that
Christopher Nolan is a genius.
Memento is one of the greatest films of the last decade and easily a top 100 film if ever there was one -- crazed, inventive, and dripping with brilliance. His Batman reboot
Batman Begins was a fantastic comic book movie, getting an abused franchise back on its feet when it needed it most. And, well,
The Dark Knight is about as good a superhero movie as we have any right to ask for. It broke conventions, shattered box-office records, and proved once and for all that audiences were ready for mature, intelligent comic book movies. All that said, Christopher Nolan is the wrong, wrong, wrong person to oversee
Superman.
Once
The Dark Knight's success was written in stone, the top brass at Warner Bros. held a meeting to discuss the future of their comic franchises. Realizing that there was a tremendous future in mature stories, they came out of that meeting announcing something that at once elated comic book fans while simultaneously terrifying them. They stated publicly that they had seen the light and from here on out WB would be producing "dark" comic book movies with mature themes.
"YAY!" And they were starting with Superman.
"Wait, say what?" Fast-forward a year and a half. Despite criticism, WB has revealed that Christopher Nolan will be overseeing (but supposedly not directing) the rebirth of the classic red-caped hero.
Here's why it sounds like a bad idea.
1) Superman ISN'T a dark hero. First and foremost, Superman isn't a dark character and neither are his villains. Superman is larger-than-life. He is the last member of an
otherwise mostly extinct race, making him a lonely outcast who makes the best of his existence here. At his best, he is the embodiment of everything right and good with 1930s/40s America, while having lost (or never possessed) the negative elements of that era. He is Mom, baseball, and apple pie, and he stands for "truth, justice, and the American way." There's NOTHING dark about him or his story, only a sadness that drives his overtly boy scout tendencies.
2) Superman isn't a detective. Nolan thrives telling noir-ish detective stories. Superman isn't a detective. He's a reporter. He hits things. Hard. And flies fast. And burns holes in things. And blows cold air that freezes things. Thinking? That ain't his style. He's not dumb, but a good Superman story isn't about him tracking down criminals; it is about a world in peril with only one man who can save it.
3) They're throwing out the current continuity. They're ignoring the last film, and most likely the Richard Donner ones as well. You know what that means: origin story. Again.
Batman Begins was a good film, but it wasn't
The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight worked much better because it told a story rather than tried to explain where the hero actually came from. It's the same reason
Spider-Man 2 worked better than the original. Every school child knows the origin of Superman. There is no need to reteach it.
4) Nolan is great on story, but terrible on staying true to its history. While working on Batman, Nolan's crew often had to explain the significance of certain Batman items and pieces of history. He wanted it to make sense, so he threw out everything that didn't make sense to him. That's great. But it also meant he ditched almost all of the science-fiction elements to Batman because Nolan didn't get or like them. He also tossed chunks of the Batman origin story while inventing others from whole cloth. When he's not directing, will he have the same level of interaction and micromanagement of those kinds of details with the crew? Will he change major elements of Superman to tell the type of story he would rather see told?
5) Superman is science fiction. Nolan is real world. Most importantly, Nolan has yet to prove himself in the realm of science fiction. His next film,
Inception, happens to be science fiction, but no one seems to know what it is about or whether or not it will be any good.
The Prestige was sort of science fiction, but still held at its heart a dark mystery. The Batman movies were interesting in that they tried to place Batman in our world with only a few comic book flourishes. But Superman is four-color wonder filled with spaceships, robots, and a supergenius madman WB has seen fit to include in every single Superman movie to date (rather than telling any other story about any other villain). I'm not convinced that Nolan's real world sensibilities will translate to a story about an alien who can fly faster than the speed of light.
That said, I could be wrong. Maybe there's a side of Nolan we haven't seen that gets Superman on a profoundly different level; maybe he's dying to tell a big stars-and-bars waving action science-fiction film. He's the only guy at the studio with the juice to make a film without an origin story (outside of a credit sequence introduction) -- maybe he plans on making a Lex Luthor-free film. If that Nolan is secretly lurking within the guy that keeps making dark, moody think pieces, then count me wrong on five counts. But I haven't seen that guy, nor have I heard about that guy even existing. So until that guy shows up, I remain highly skeptical. One blockbuster hit comic film does not a great Superman film make. If it did, everyone would have loved the LAST Superman movie.
Absolutely amazing how people are misfiring on Nolan's involvement. And not just his involvement, but his style in general. Nolan only makes dark and gritty superhero movies? Do they not realise that the style is in line with the Batman character? Jeez. 
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