Robert Downey Jr. never understood Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’: “Fuck DC Comics”

Robert Downey Jr., Hollywood’s highest-paid superstar who has brought Iron Man to life on the big screen for so many years and will soon return to the MCU as Doctor Doom, won his only Oscar to date for his brilliant performance in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. However, Downey Jr. did not always have the best impression of the filmmaker, especially after directing the best installment of his own Batman trilogy: The Dark Knight. “That’s not my idea of what I want to see,” said the actor after watching the acclaimed film starring Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Heath Ledger as the Joker.

Robert Downey Jr.: “I feel like I’m dumb”

He said this back in 2008, the same year he released his first film as Iron Man, laying the foundation for one of the most successful franchises in film history: “My whole thing is that that I saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie,’” the famous actor admitted.

“I loved ‘The Prestige’ but didn’t understand ‘The Dark Knight’. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so f--king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? F-ck DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from,” Downey Jr. concluded with his usual sarcastic tone.

Surely Downey Jr., as the face of the new Marvel in 2008, would feel threatened by the overwhelming critical and commercial success of The Dark Knight, which cemented the Batman saga, now on a par with Burton’s first two films, following the commendable Batman Begins in 2005, also by Nolan. He then stated: “You know, you’re never too old to burn your bridges because I believe I have offended everyone. I think I’ve got a couple more.”

Be that as it may, DC won its little battle against Marvel with The Dark Knight, grossing just over $1 billion at the box office compared to Iron Man’s nearly $600 million, although we all know that the MCU became the perfect machine for generating millions in profits over the next decade. And everything points to it doing so again with its upcoming Spider-Man and Avengers movies.

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