4. The Dark Knight (2008)

Purposefully designed as Nolan’s homage to Michael Mann’s Heat, The Dark Knight synthesizes Nolan’s artistic influences with the seminal Batman graphic novels The Long Halloween and The Killing Joke to become its own sweeping crime epic that wholly defined the late-aughts zeitgeist. This time, the Batman teams with principled district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to stop The Joker (Heath Ledger) who burns down Gotham’s criminal underworld.

Ledger’s death undoubtedly lent a macabre aura to his mesmerizing performance. But The Dark Knight is a monumental feature from top to bottom. It’s evidence that 21st century box office juggernauts can still deliver the heat and have a thing or two to say about domestic terrorism, the chaos of vigilantism, and the failures of government institutions to keep order. Amid the uncertainty of the global financial crisis, the world flocked to theaters for safety in Batman’s shadows. You couldn’t make another movie The Dark Knight anymore – not because the people don’t want one, but because no one can repeat its magic again. Not even Nolan could.