Credit: DC / Warner Bros.In a recent interview, film director Christopher Nolan revealed that one part of The Dark Knight (2008) still haunts him to this day.
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Filmmaker Christopher Nolan is on top of the world. Not only was Oppenheimer (2023) the third highest-grossing film of the year, but it is practically guaranteed to win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr., and so many more.
While the esteemed director has multiple films under his belt, including Inception (2010) and Dunkirk (2017), his most famous films are in the Dark Knight Trilogy. The film that stands out from the pack is The Dark Knight, and Nolan says that one part of the film still “plagues him” today.
Christopher Nolan Didn’t Write ‘Dark Knight’s Most Famous Line
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There are plenty of iconic characters in The Dark Knight who deliver iconic lines, including Batman (Christian Bale), Joker (Heath Ledger), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), and Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). That being said, the best line comes from Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). This particular line has stuck with Christopher Nolan because he didn’t write it.
“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 Nolan] wrote it. It kills me because it’s the line that most resonates. And at the time, I didn’t even understand it. He says, ‘You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.’“
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Nolan continued:
“I read it in his draft, 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. In this story, it’s absolutely that. Build them up, tear them down. It’s the way we treat people.”
Fortunately, Nolan has since written multiple other screenplays that have remained in the public lexicon. And if he’s lucky, he’ll soon be rewarded for his writing with an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
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