Watch: Christopher Nolan’s Visual Homage To Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’ in ‘The Dark Knight’

Even the most original filmmakers are influenced by other directors. Quentin Tarantino famously said, “I steal from every single film ever made.” Tarantino is not alone. British director Christopher Nolan, who is praised for original films like Memento and Inception, has made no secret of his enthusiasm for borrowing from the James Bond films. He is also highly influenced by filmmaking greats, Albert Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. And now according to a video essay by Glass Distortion, Nolan also borrowed from Michael Mann for The Dark Knight.

For avid moviegoers, The Dark Knight’s opening heist scene is reminiscent of the bank heist in Heat. William Fichtner, who was in Heat, even featured in the scene as a bank employee who stands up to the Joker’s goons. As you’ll see, the visual essay makes a convincing argument that Heat is a principal source for Nolan in The Dark Knight, with a number of shots from Heat seemingly reproduced throughout Nolan’s film.

Convinced? If you need anymore convincing then you can turn to Christopher Nolan himself. In 2016, he moderated a Q&A event after a special screening of Heat with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and director Michael Mann. The event was a year after Heat’s 20th Anniversary.

At one point Nolan admitted: “I’ve drawn inspiration from it in my own work.”

In another interview, he said:

“I always felt Heat to be a remarkable demonstration of how you can create a vast universe within one city and balance a very large number of characters and their emotional journeys in an effective manner.”

This comment could describe Gotham City. The city, often referred to as a character itself, is a self-contained universe with a pantheon of larger-than-life characters that no other city could contain.

Nolan also referenced Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Killing (1956), using almost exact replicas of the robbers’ masks in The Dark Knight’s opening heist.

It’s interesting to see how a great director like Nolan referenced so many shots from Heat, and still created an entirely original film with The Dark Knight. Far from plagiarism, it’s a homage in the best sense of the word. One which Michael Mann was no doubt happy with.