Actually that’s a lie, I desperately want a third Batman film from Nolan and Co. I want it more than anything. That creative team took a series which had become a punchline and turned it into a legitimate franchise again, an event I thought I was going to have to sacrifice something large to an Elder God just to see happen in my lifetime.

Batman Begins was hailed by many as one of the best superhero movies ever, and a justified return to form for a character which had become more associated in the broader community with bat-nipples than kicking ass. It legitimised Batman outside of comic books, made him again a figure of awe and respect and downright face-kicking awesomness.

The Dark Knight managed to go one better, surpassing even the wildest hope of fanboys everywhere after we’d been shown that you could have a Batman film that actually took its subject matter seriously, and didn’t filter it through a lens of high camp or even twisted gothic noir. It’s being hailed in some quarters as a potential outside chance for Best Freaking Picture, for god’s sake. Regardless of how overblown those claims are, the fact they’re even being uttered without being instantly laughed down and the person who made them given a wedgie and dumped head-first into a bin is a sign of the incredible acheivement of these two films.

But I’m starting to get uneasy. I’ve come to the conclusion that I genuinely would rather not see a third Batman film, at least not for a while, and definitely not from Nolan and Co. And here’s why.

First of all, there’s creator fatigue to consider. Nolan and his production team have done an incredible job bringing Batman to life not only as a credible charater, but as a believable character; a very important distinction. There’s certain hoops you have to jump through to get people to believe in a man dressed as a giant Bat. In the comics, depending on the artist, it can look incredibly badass.

ABOVE: “As I look into the pitch-black depths of my city, I wonder: did I remember to turn the stove off this afternoon?”

Unfortunately the effect doesn’t tend to translate to live action well.

ABOVE: It seems even superheroes need to worry about bunching at the elbows and knees.

As a compromise, you have to try to distract the viewer from the fact that a guy dressed up like a Bat looks terrible. Hollywood tries to get around this by just going crazy with moulded rubber, and fails miserably in the process.

ABOVE: I always thought it was kind of hypocritical they didn’t put nipples on Batgirl’s suit.

But Nolan didn’t. He deliberately set out to create a universe where you could believe that a troubled millionaire dresses like a Bat and isn’t immediately beaten, sodomised and shot by the first thug he tries to arrest.

ABOVE: The Goddamn Batman

Nolan’s Gotham City is a real city, it’s dark protector a real man, facing real threats. This isn’t kids stuff, it’s deadly serious. That’s the great triumph of these films, they’ve exhaustively set up this universe that we believe in.

But how much longer can they keep it up? Batman, by his very nature, is a comic book character. He’s larger than life. Often his universe is as well. How many more stories can you tell in the Nolan-conveived Batverse with those parameters of realistic and believeable thrown in?

I mean, both movies had their more unbelievable elements. Begins was famously derided for R’as Al Ghul’s moustache-twirling scheme involving a “microwave cannon” and a “weaponised hallucinogen”, while The Dark Knight’s Joker at times seemed to be able to shit TNT and teleport. But these flaws were no more egregious than those found in any blockbuster action movie.

The trouble comes as you try to wring more stories out of this universe that are big enough to justify a two-hour movie. And that’s the key here- the story has to be big enough to be a Batman Film, with all the expectations that entails.

Do Nolan and his crew have another Batman story in them? Given the limits of the universe they’ve created?

Not to mention the actual plot of any movie would hinge around a rogue’s gallery which is shrinking very quickly. Which is surprising given the size and quality of Batman’s rogue’s gallery, which is second perhaps only to Spider-Man’s in all of comics. But not so surprising when you realise that a lot of the villains beloved by fans would have to be ditched, either because their sci-fi origins are too out-there to fit in Nolan’s hyper-real universe, or they’re just a little too silly.

ABOVE: The Clock King. Seriously.

Villains like Killer Croc or Clayface just don’t work in the Nolan-verse. Interestingly, someone like Firefly might, but Batman fighting Firefly isn’t going to result in the second highest grossing movie of all time.

So that leaves us with a very small pool of possible adversaries for the next film. Catwoman is the obvious choice, but her anti-hero status and romance with Bats means she can’t really be the main villain of the movie. Given the heavy focus on the mob, having gangland heavyweight Oswald Cobblepot, AKA The Penguin become Batman’s criminal nemesis sounds like a good idea. So Catwoman and Penguin. That’s a solid pairing. So solid it’s already been done-

There’s also the Riddler, which would make for a great mind-games match of wits with Batman, but he falls down in the ass-kicking department. And in the hyper-real Nolan-verse, you have to explain why armies of henchmen are following an obsessive compulsive shut-in living in a basement apartment.

Not to mention every single one of them will by default be living in the shadow of this guy

ABOVE: One of the best screen villains of all time. No pressure or anything.

Having said that, I’m sure Nolan and Co. have some ideas for future sequels. These guys made scarecrow and R’as Al Ghul credible for the screen, I’m sure they can make Catwoman work.

The trouble is, I’m still not one hundred percent certain they can. They’ve knocked it out of the park two times in a row, sure. Can they do it a third time?

History isn’t on their side. Every comic book movie fan knows about the dreaded Third Movie Curse, that inexplicable statistical punch to the nuts that has caused practically every third installment of a superhero franchise to suck harder than a black hole. X-Men 3, Spiderman 3, Superman 3, Blade: Trinity, the list goes on. Bizarre rewrites add characters or create shitty new ones out of whole cloth. Beloved characters are killed purely for shock value. Directors either get replaced, or lose their fucking minds and have their heroes do an excruciatingly long dance sequence for no fucking reason.

ABOVE: The punchline to Sam Raimi’s practical joke played on the world’s geek population.

It’s nasty to see happen, and it happens with alarming regularity. Nolan and Co have proven themselves to be a formidable team. But what if they decided they didn’t want to do any more Batman movies? What if Christian Bale decided he wasn’t being Batman without Nolan? So you’ve got a new cast and a new director. The last time that happened on the Bat films, Joel Shumacher ejaculated Batman Forever and Batman and Robin at an unsuspecting movie public.

Like them or hate them, the two Burton Batman films have their own sense of style and are a cool addition to the Bat-mythos. Then, for the third film, Burton was swapped out for Schumacher, and we got Batman Forever, a bizarre film which introduces Robin as the obviously late-20s Chris O’Donnell (in probably the films only good move, as it neatly side-stepps the whole “child-endangerment” issue if a live-action Batman fights crime with a 12 year old in tow). It also wastes and mis-casts two of the Rogues gallery’s best villains, Two-Face and the Riddler. The Dark Knight spends literally its entire run-time dealing with the character of Harvey Dent and his fall to become Two-Face. Batman Forever deals with two-face’s origin not even in a flashback, but a seconds-long playback on a monitor in the Batcave.

I’m not even going to talk about Batman and Robin. That film is so bad it should be banned under the Geneva Convention.

Regardless of the threat to its own series a third Bat-film might have, I’m also concerned about the effect The Dark Knight will have on comic book movies in general. See, The Dark Knight was a great film. It’s almost without question the best superhero film ever made, and it’s a legitimately good film generally as well. Not to mention it’s officially the second highest grossing movie of all time.

If we’re lucky, studio execs will see that and say “wow, it turns out if we make good movies with good scripts and good actors, which treat the source material as a platform to build on rather than a bit of a joke, people will pay to see them. They’ll pay two or three times, actually.”

The pessimist in me worries that what we’ll actually see is this- “Wow, The Dark Knight has raped the box office right in the cornhole! The Dark Knight was bleak and gritty and had lots of tragedy! Therefore, superhero movies should be gritty, even when it’s not called for! Also, they should be as realistic as possible!”

The last time something like this happened in comics, we got the 90s.

ABOVE: EXXTREEEEEEME! TO THE MAX!!

A Batman book was partially responsible for that. The Dark Knight Returns. A gritty, dark reimagining of a character which had become bogged down with camp and continuity. The other book thought responsible for the 90s trend of grim and gritty was a little book called Watchmen.

You may recall that Watchmen will be on the big screen by 2009.

Look, like I said at the start of this very long and self-indulgent article, I would love a third Nolan-helmed Bat-film starring Christian Bale. But could anything top The Dark Knight? Should anything try?

Maybe it’s time to let the Bat rest for a while. He’s done his job, and proved that genuinely good cinema can be spun from the pulpy sensiblility of comics. With his impending “reinvention” in the pages of DC Comics as we speak, maybe we’ve reached the point where our Dark Knight can hang up his cape and cowl, at least for the time being.

Maybe we should be happy with what we’ve got, and not try for that third roll of the dice that always seems to kill great series. We got the best comic book movie of all time. Can that be enough?