The Dark Knight is the second entry in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and it broke a movie title tradition by not having the hero’s name in the title – and here’s why it didn’t include it. Batman has had an interesting history on the big screen full of successful movies but also some that didn’t meet expectations and effectively killed any future projects, as were the cases of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, considered one of the best Batman movies, and Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, which is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made.

The Caped Crusader got a new chance to bring his adventures to the big screen in 2005 with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, the first entry in a trilogy that brought Bruce Wayne (now played by Christian Bale) to a more realistic and grounded Gotham City, where he came across Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). Three years later came the sequel titled The Dark Knight, which saw Batman coming face to face with the Joker (Heath Ledger) and Harvey Dent’s (Aaron Eckhart) transformation into the classic villain “Two-Face Harvey”. The Dark Knight is now regarded as one of the best superhero movies ever made, and it also broke a Batman tradition through one simple but effective change in its title.

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As it turns out, The Dark Knight is the first Batman movie to not have the hero’s name on its title. Batman’s first adventure on the big screen was in two serial movies in the 1940s titled Batman and Batman and Robin, and in the 1960s he appeared in Batman, an adaptation of the classic TV series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. The Caped Crusader’s history on the big screen then jumps to 1989 with Tim Burton’s Batman, where Michael Keaton played the title character, followed by Batman Returns in 1992 and later by Batman Forever in 1995, now with Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne, and closing with the above-mentioned Batman & Robin, where George Clooney played the lead character.

Batman in The Dark Knight

With the first movie in the Dark Knight trilogy titled Batman Begins, it felt odd that the second movie got rid of “Batman” in its title, but it was a decision taken by Nolan himself, who wanted to do something different from Batman Begins and at the same time wanted to distance the movie from previous Batman ones. Christian Bale told FilmFocus (via IGN) back in 2006 that he liked the fact that The Dark Knight doesn’t have “Batman” in the title, as what he and Nolan did was “very different from any others and everything else always had Batman in the title”. It was also a title that didn’t reveal anything about the story, as well as a reference to one of the many names Batman has, and it certainly gave the movie a darker and more mature vibe, as having “Batman” in the title easily evokes the styles of the cartoons, the Adam West series, and Burton and Schumacher’s movies, which are nothing like what Nolan did.

Getting rid of “Batman” in the title of The Dark Knight was a good decision that worked well for the image of the character and the movie in general as Batman was going through a more realistic phase that required changes in everything, including the title. However, the same can’t be said about the sequel and final entry in the Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, which has a title that fans have criticized for years, especially after the movie came out.

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