Like Knight And Day

Promoting July 16th's "Inception" director Christopher Nolan spoke to Empire and they got him to talk about both Batman 3 and Superman: Man of Steel that he's supposed to 'mentor'.

Nolan still hasn't officially signed on to direct the next "Batman" and he says its due to workload - "the God's honest truth is I work on one movie at a time. I'm only capable of doing that, so my head will continue to be firmly in ['Inception'] ...."

His brother Jonathan Nolan is currently working on the script and Nolan is excited about it because he "particularly like(s) where we are taking the characters and what the ending is... There are things for me to be very excited about in addressing the characters again."

He confirmed that the film will be the end of a trilogy arc rather than a random third entry - "the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story."

As to the villain he "emphatically and unhesitatingly" states we will NOT see the return of The Joker with someone else taking on the late Heath Ledger's role - "No, I just don't feel comfortable about it."

What about a superhero team up project?

"Superman is very specifically superpowered and obviously otherworldly; Batman is very human and flawed... there's an elemental feeling of power in the iconography of those characters. To me that's originally because they stood alone. I need to hang on to that in my imagining of them."

So what about Supes?

Nolan says David Goyer pitched him a new approach to the Man of Steel one day, and Nolan "thought it was really tremendous. It was the first time I had been able to conceive of how you would address Superman in a modern context."

He took that idea to the studio suits, they liked it and now "It's something we were just trying to put together a vision for, and then find the right person to take it forward... it's not something for me to direct."

Like his "Batman" which went back to the character's darker and more serious roots, Nolan says that is what's needed with Superman - "what makes those the best superhero characters there are, the most beloved after all this time, is the essence of who those characters were when they were created and when they were first developed. And you can't ever move too far from that."

I just love the way Nolan talks about movies