The Dark Knight (film) The Dark Knight (film) The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, co-produced, and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is the second part of Nolan's "The Dark Knight Trilogy" and a sequel to 2005's "Batman Begins", starring an ensemble cast including Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Morgan Freeman. In the film, Bruce Wayne / Batman (Bale), Police Lieutenant James Gordon (Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Eckhart) form an alliance to dismantle organized crime in Gotham City, but are menaced by an anarchist
Batman Begins and some of the exterior monorail shots. The climactic monorail sequence mixed live action footage, model work, and CGI. The bats depicted in the film were entirely digital (except in shots containing only one or two bats), as it was decided that directing large numbers of real bats on-set would be problematic; dead bats were scanned to create digital models. Locations and sets were recreated digitally so that the flying bats would not appear incongruous once incorporated into the finished film. The score for "Batman Begins" was composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Nolan originally invited Zimmer to