18 Years Later, The Dark Knight Trilogy’s Secret Fourth Movie Is Still One Of Batman’s Best Films

Almost a decade after Batman & Robin had nearly killed off the franchise for good, Christopher Nolan rejuvenated the Caped Crusader on the big screen. Batman Begins gave the Bat a more thorough origin story than ever before, The Dark Knight planted Michael Mann’s Heat on the streets of Gotham, and The Dark Knight Rises provided a satisfying, definitive ending to the trilogy. Batman literally rode off into the sunset (or, rather, flew the Batwing).

No trilogy has a perfect ending, but The Dark Knight trilogy got a better ending than most, and everyone involved moved on — including Warner Bros., who would reboot Batman within four years — but that hasn’t stopped Warners from trying to get a fourth Dark Knight film off the ground. Both Nolan and his star, Christian Bale, turned down the opportunity to make The Dark Knight 4, so they could leave the trilogy as is. Rumors started circling that Bale was offered a cameo in The Flash, but that ultimately never came to fruition. A fourth Dark Knight film would be a guaranteed $1 billion blockbuster, but it doesn’t seem to be on the cards.

But The Dark Knight trilogy technically already has four installments. Batman: Gotham Knight was conceived as an inbetweenquel set between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It sees Batman taking on the mob in Gotham City, and features appearances by recurring villains from the movies like the Scarecrow. Gotham Knight shouldn’t necessarily be taken as strict canon in the Nolan-verse, but it’s a great Batman movie nevertheless.

Christopher and Jonathan Nolan consulted on the project to make sure it fit in with their vision of The Dark Knight trilogy, but it’s not supposed to be a crucial part of the story. The trilogy still makes perfect sense without the extra context that Gotham Knight provides. But if you like Nolan’s Batman movies, you should definitely check it out.

Batman: Gotham Knight Is An Anime-Inspired Dark Knight Spinoff

Batman in the sewer in Batman: Gotham Knight

Similar to The Animatrix, Batman: Gotham Knight is an anthology movie made up of several different shorts, all connected by narrative elements. Each segment has their own writing and art styles, heavily inspired by the anime aesthetic. Gotham Knight’s similarities to The Animatrix have earned it the nickname “The Batimatrix.” But it’s not just an Animatrix knockoff; it’s a completely fresh and original take on the Batman mythos, and those are getting fewer and farther between now that the character has been around for so many decades, and so many iterations.

Gotham Knight was the first DC Original Animated movie to tie in with outside Batman media; it’s the first one to take place within the world of any of the live-action movies. Each short was penned by a different writer; David S. Goyer, the co-writer of the trilogy, wrote one of them, but the writing team also included DC Comics writer Brian Azzarello and A History of Violence scribe Josh Olson.

The first segment, “Have I Got a Story for You,” tells a Rashomon-style tale of conflicting eyewitness accounts. The second segment, “Crossfire,” explores the aftermath of Batman Begins from the perspective of the criminal underworld. The third one, “Field Test,” is all about Lucius Fox’s tech; the fourth, “In Darkness Dwells,” catches up with the Scarecrow; the fifth, “Working Through Pain,” sees Batman recovering from a gunshot wound in the sewer; and the sixth and final short, “Deadshot,” is all about – you guessed it — the notorious assassin Deadshot.

Although it takes place in The Dark Knight universe, Bale didn’t return to play the Bat in Batman: Gotham Knight. Instead, we got the next best thing: arguably the greatest Batman actor of all, Mr. Kevin Conroy. Ever since his seminal turn in Batman: The Animated Series, Conroy has been the quintessential Bruce Wayne for a lot of fans. For some of us, Conroy’s is the voice we hear in our heads when we read Batman comics.

Batman: Gotham Knight

Release Date: July 8, 2008
Runtime: 75 minutes
Director: Yasuhiro Aoki, Yuichiro Hayashi, Futoshi Higashide, Toshiyuki Kubooka, Hiroshi Morioka, Jong-Sik Nam
Writers: Bob Kane, Josh Olson, Jordan Goldberg, Greg Rucka, Brian Azzarello, Alan Burnett