Christopher Nolan is high on the list of the best modern filmmakers. He's known for his visionary and bold body of work, which includes films like Memento, Inception and his comic-book genre-defining Dark Knight Trilogy (even if he believes some underappreciate it). Ask any artist where the inspiration for the work comes from, and you’ll quickly find out it can come from just about anywhere. This is the case when it comes to Nolan’s final Batman flick, The Dark Knight Rises. The mastermind behind the ’00s critically acclaimed Cape Crusader movies recently revealed that his inspiration for the direction of the third and final installment of the series came from an unexpected source -- Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky III.
In film critic Tom Shone’s recently released book, The Nolan Variations, the Tenet director gets honest about his thoughts regarding trilogies and what he found particularly challenging when approaching a third film in a series. As the filmmaker explained, there aren’t many good threequels, except for perhaps the iconic third installment in Stallone’s boxing saga. Christopher Nolan says this realization drove him to switch direction and change genres when he began production on The Dark Knight Rises. The director said (via Fandomwire):
