The Dark Knight trilogy

As Showmax releases Oscar-nominated movie The Batman on Sunday, 19 March, we look back at Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale’s Bat-fan favourites in The Dark Knight trilogy.

Batman Begins

This was the first-ever Batman movie to explore how orphaned billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) trained under the League Of Shadows’ Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) to become Batman – terror of Gotham’s criminal cohort like psycho psychologist Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) – with support and loads of spicy attitude from Wayne Mansion butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine), future police commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Wayne Enterprises genius gadget inventor and Batmobile designer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman).

The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger’s iconic reimagining of Clown Prince of Gotham, The Joker, won him a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar. In his battle with Batman, he delivers lone-wolf and school shooter-style quips like “You have nothing to threaten me with,” with a seductive comic flare. And in a double villain spectacular, upstanding politician Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) becomes crispy villain Two Face thanks to an explosion and ground-breaking CGI makeup effects.

The Dark Knight Rises

The final film in the trilogy is set eight years into Bruce Wayne’s career as Batman, in a slowly recovering Gotham. Bane (Tom Hardy), a masked criminal too vicious even for the League Of Shadows, stakes his claim on the city by bankrupting Bruce Wayne to lure Batman out of hiding. And because Gotham villains arrive in batches like buses, we also get Talia Al Ghul (Marion Cotillard) out to avenge her dad, and the return of Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). The story sets up Batman/Bruce Wayne’s handover to a new orphan, detective Robin John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).