Christopher Nolan reveals line from ‘The Dark Knight’ that “plagues” him
More than 15 years since the film was released, director Christopher Nolan has revealed the line from The Dark Knight that still “plagues” on his mind.
Nolan’s latest offering, Oppenheimer, proved to be a box office hit and has subsequently received huge award success. Nolan recently took home the ‘Best Director’ title at the Baftas, while star Cillian Murphy won the ‘Best Actor’ award.
While promoting the new film, the director shared the line that still plagues him from his previous venture into superhero filmmaking, all because he didn’t write it. During a conversation with Deadline alongside Murphy, Nolan shared, “I’m plagued by a line from The Dark Knight, and I’m plagued by it because I didn’t write it.”
“My brother [Jonathan] wrote it,” Nolan admitted, “It kills me, because it’s the line that most resonates.”
The line Nolan is referring to is one of the most iconic quotes from the series. “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” Aaron Eckhart’s character, Harvey Dent, declares in the film, a line that would become endlessly quotable. However, Nolan himself didn’t even understand at first.
“I read it in his draft,” he explained, “and I was like, ‘All right, I’ll keep it in there, but I don’t really know what it means. Is that really a thing?’ And then, over the years since that film’s come out, it just seems truer and truer.”
Nolan even suggested that the line relates to Oppenheimer, concluding, “In this story, it’s absolutely that. Build them up, tear them down. It’s the way we treat people.”
In a four-star review of Oppenheimer, Far Out wrote: “With Oppenheimer, Nolan hasn’t just delivered an entertaining, thought-provoking movie as he had done with his previous efforts, but a thoroughly important one that informs even the most sheltered of us about the global situation we find ourselves in today.”
Revisit the trailer for Oppenheimer below.
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