The Real Reason We Never Got A Dark Knight 4 From Christopher Nolan

Holy refreshing sense of humility, Batman! It sounds like Christian Bale really did know when to say goodbye to his role as the Dark Knight. 

Bale has been hot on the publicity trail of late in support of his new race car drama Ford v Ferrari, in which he plays a racer opposite Matt Damon's mild-mannered car designer. Recently, the Ford v Ferrari press campaign found the former Batman actor sitting down with the folks at The Toronto Sun, who used part of their time with him to ask a question that's long been on the minds of fans devoted to Bale's iconic work in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. 

The question, of course, was this: "Why didn't Bale sign on for a Dark Knight 4?" 

Bale's answer to the question is as simple as it is surprisingly humble. The actor claimed he ultimately decided a fourth turn as the Caped Crusader (and thus a Dark Knight 4) would have been "overindulgent."

That's right — in a time where stars and studios seem to keep lining up blockbuster sequels to milk every single penny out of a franchise, Bale, long regarded as a true "actor's actor," apparently told Warner Bros. "thanks but no thanks" when the studio approached him about reprising his role as Bruce Wayne for another Dark Knight venture. And if Bale is to be believed, he did so largely because he didn't want to overstay his welcome in the role. 

It's worth nothing that Bale's decision was also greatly influenced by the fact that Nolan was indeed moving on from the Dark Knight franchise. As Bale continued to wax poetic about why he didn't return for a fourth Dark Knight flick, he admitted as much — noting that, outside of his own wishes to leave Batman behind, his decision to walk away from what would've no doubt been a mammoth payday for Dark Knight 4 was equally out of respect for Christopher Nolan himself.  

"We were never arrogant to assume that we had an opportunity beyond one film at a time. That's something that Chris always would talk about. He'd say, 'This is it. We're making one film. That's all we've got,'" said Bale. "Then when they came and said, 'You want to go make another?' It was fantastic, but we still said, 'This is it. We will not get another opportunity." 

Bale went on to offer that while a trilogy was far from a given for Nolan's Dark Knight saga, it was, if only indirectly, what the director had in mind from the start. 

"Chris had always said to me that if we were fortunate to be able to make three we would stop. 'Let's walk away after that,'" Bale shared. "Then when they [Warner Bros.] inevitably came to us and said, 'How about a No. 4?' I said, 'No. We have to stick to Chris' dream, which was always to, hopefully, do a trilogy. Let's not stretch too far and become overindulgent and go for a fourth.'"

As we all know, Bale and Nolan got two more chapters of their Gotham-set saga after the success of 2005's Batman Begins. With 2008's game-changing The Dark Knight and 2011's trilogy-capping The Dark Knight Rises, they also happened to fashion one of the most vaunted superhero trilogies in the history of cinema. 

While The Dark Knight (the first of the series' sequels) is still widely regarded as being among the greatest superhero movies ever made, adoration isn't quite as strong for Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, which continues to divide both critics and fans. Truth be told, part of the problem with The Dark Knight Rises is that the film itself feels a bit overstuffed, and teeters frequently on the edge of overindulgent in its own right. Perhaps Bale and Nolan were smart to end their franchise when they did. 

Still, there's little doubt that fans of Nolan and Bale's Dark Knight trilogy would've turned out en masse for even a massively "overindulgent" Dark Knight 4, though such a film may have also tarnished the trilogy's mostly impeccable legacy.