Christopher Nolan
Life and career
In 2006, Nolan announced that the follow-up to Batman Begins would be called The Dark Knight. Approaching the sequel, Nolan wanted to expand on the noirish quality of the first film by broadening the canvas and taking on "the dynamic of a story of the city, a large crime story ... where you're looking at the police, the justice system, the vigilante, the poor people, the rich people, the criminals". Released in July 2008 to great critical acclaim, The Dark Knight has been cited as one of the best films of the 2000s and one of the best superhero films ever made. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times found the film to be of higher artistic merit than many Hollywood blockbusters: "Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind." Ebert expressed a similar point of view, describing it as a "haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy." The Dark Knight set a number of box-office records during its theatrical run, earning $534,858,444 in North America and $469,700,000 abroad, for a worldwide total of $1,004,558,444. At the 81st Academy Awards, the film was nominated for eight Oscars, winning two: the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing and a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger. Nolan received many awards and nominations for his work on the film. In 2018, Bilge Ebiri of The Village Voice wrote, "Its politics have been discussed ad infinitum. Its stylistic influence has become ubiquitous, then passé, then somehow aspirational ... The Dark Knight is perhaps the most powerful exploration of guilt the modern American blockbuster has given us."
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