The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Complete Screenplays (The Opus Screenplay)

It all starts with the screenplay. If you want to truly explore the universe that the Nolans and David S. Goyer created in their Dark Knight Trilogy, then I recommend you read their screenplays, collected for easy reading in this book. At the time of this writing, the script for The Dark Knight Rises is not available online, so if you want to read it, this is the only game in town. To experience these stories, in the writers' OWN VOICE ON THE PAGE, is a great way to add another dimension to your enjoyment of the films and to learn a lot about the craft of screenwriting and visual storytelling, as well. The best part, for me, is the extended interview with Christopher and Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer that opens the book -- it's great to see an interview where they focus on the STORY and the CHARACTERS, with particular emphasis on Bruce Wayne's arc over the three films. I learned some very interesting things, like how Chris Nolan began with action set pieces and then built the story around those for The Dark Knight, but for Rises, he focused on Bruce's arc and the major beats of the story before adding any kind of action sequences. Also, they say multiple times that they did not intend for any of the films to comment on "The War on Terror" or our post-9/11 period which so many fans and analysts (myself included!) have read into the films. It's tough to know what to think about that -- the parallels are definitely there if you choose to look for them, so should we ignore them and just focus on the journey of the characters and thematic unity of the narrative? And they may say that The Joker was all about chaos and had no plan, but he had to have done a great deal of planning to pull off the things he did in TDK, so how do we process that motivation and how does it relate the the use of Theme? If you're like me and you like to analyze and tear apart every part of these movies, then these are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night. But most of you probably aren't as giant of a story analysis nerd as I, so you don't really care. ;-) If you would like to go deeper into analyzing Nolan's Batman-verse (and please bear with my plug) then I recommend reading my book, especially the Story Map of The Dark Knight in the Appendix: Story Maps: How to Write a GREAT Screenplay . Also, the story maps for X-Men, The Matrix and Raiders of the Lost Ark offer similar templates and insight, broken down in my companion book: Story Maps: Booster Pack #1 . I also do a podcast with a friend and we talk about the story behind most of Nolan's films, offering free downloads of story breakdowns, at actfourscreenplays dot com. I offer these links because there is such a huge fanbase for these films online but it's difficult to find intelligent, deep analysis of the screenplays within all the clutter. I also encourage your comments and arguments to continue the discussion. As for this book, my only caveat, AS USUAL, is that the book does not use truly correct screenplay format! I know it sounds picky, but for someone who works with screenplays for a living, it drives me crazy when I see things like the description/action portions being italicized, or an incorrect font (at least on the Kindle version, which CAN reproduce Courier and other fonts). Seriously, for TWENTY+ YEARS print volumes have presented screenplays with italicized description, incorrect slug lines, incorrect page breaks, etc.! With so many aspiring writers out there looking to learn about the form and format, it does them a disservice to present it in a manner that was not used in the industry, IMHO. But, I recognize that not everyone is interested in screenwriting, many just want to collect all there is to collect about their favorite pop culture movies. Okay, rant over. :-) In closing, I recommend this book. And the storyboard sequences are cool, too, although fyi, they only show select scenes, not the entire films.

Great find for fans of the Dark Knight trilogy and/or Nolan fans!

Now this is a great a reasonable find. Not only does it have the screenplays (in shooting script format) for all three films of the Nolan Batman trilogy, but it also has a short sequence of selected storyboards of each film (no, it's not the complete storyboard of each film). Also, the book is prefaced by an interview-styled introduction in which Christopher Nolan (director and screenwriter), Jonathan Nolan (writer), and David S. Goyer speak about the process of making the trilogy. If you loved the Batman trilogy of the 2000's and want to see how these three master pieces came together, you must buy this book. It's over 500 pages long and you CAN NOT beat that price. A true future collector's item.

Good morning. This is a major accomplishment for all those like us that are actively engaged in the screenplay business and need the guidance of previous success stories, even some commercially-minded like the Batman series. In our day and age we must create good content that is also viable form a business perspective. That is the hard truth. Moreover we are sick and tired of this long litany of supposedly interesting super-heroes that open their mouths to vomit cheesy, monotonous, hard to understand words. The paucity of words, the limited powers and the bottomless emotional pit of the Dark Knight is a welcomed reprieve for all that nonsense. When are you making a good sequel?

I'm a big fan of Nolan's Batman films and enjoy getting inside information on movies. The begging I would have to say was the best part as it was cool to have Nolan Goyer talk about how they planned to do these movies and what style they wanted [I wish there was more of that stuff] While the rest could have come of as just reading the movies there were many parts especially in Batman Begins that either had slightly different or added dialogue, scenes in different order than in the movie and different editing such as [again in Batman Begins] there were occasional cut edits of the bats in the pit Bruce fell in. So overall while this could have come of as just reading the movie's [in some parts it was like that] this was overall a very good read and I say check it out!

The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Complete Screenplays with Storyboards (The Opus Screenplay) As a former script reader in L.A., I have always appreciated the artform (and when done right, it is an artform), so to see these three amazing screenplays collected in one volume was very exciting for me. however, even if you're not a former reader, and just love these three movies, this is a great read. For me, The dark Knight Rises really helped bring the three movies together, and really made it feel like it was a triligy, chronicling basically the entire story of Bruce Wayne as Batman. Now, hopefully, we'll get another trilogy with a new batman, but either way, this story, the story of Christian Bale as Batman, has been told, and here it is, collected in a very large book. And the storyboards? Just icing on the cake, my friends!

The complete screenplays of "The Dark Knight Trilogy" is great for any bat fat. I've been skimming over the book all day, there is a lot of really cool parts that are in the screenplay that didn't make it to the final cut of the film. Joker has a few sweet lines that I would have loved to see Heath act out. And Batman has a lot of really "batman like" moves. It's also interesting if you're a movie buff and is interested in what happens before the camera is turned on. Cool to watch side by side with the movies to see how the scenes taken out would have looked like.

This book was extremely interesting and entertaining to read. The interview in the beginning was great to read, getting a good perspective from the director, Christopher Nolan as well as writer, David S. Goyer. If your a fan of the trilogy, I suggest paying for this book that will grab your attention every time you pick it up.

El libro es interesante si te gusta el tema y quieres ir más de allá de lo que te cuenta la película o detalles en los que no es tan fácil fijarse. El productor no es que ha llegado en mal estado, pero diría que algunas páginas están ligeramente curvas y la portada con algún roce o similar. Da la sensación como si hubiera estado almacenado por un largo periodo de tiempo o algo así. Lo demás correcto

The beautiful scripts to Christopher & Jonathan Nolan's classic Dark Knight Trilogy, which is also one of the best trilogies of all times in my opinion. This trilogy changed things forever, and is perhaps the greatest Comic Book adaptation of all times. With these screenplays, aspiring filmmakers can learn how to make an incredible adaptation based on source material, while still being relevant to current times storytelling and motifs. Writing for Comic Book films will never be better than this. The book contains very nice additions like selected storyboards, and the screenplays themselves are a joy to go over. I love the fact they put all three films in one book, much more elegant than having them stashed separately. The trilogy is one big story after all. Highly recommended for Nolan fans, Batman fans or collectors in general.

Worth the money spent! The Screenplays, the storyboards and that interview are awesome! It's really big! Nice to watch the movie with this as a guide...

Libro bellissimo ma per un collezionista riceverlo in queste condizioni è inaccettabile. Hanno attaccato la chiusura del pacco sulla copertina del libro!!!!! Morale copertina rovinata!!

Excellent movie adaptations script book