In an interview, director Christopher Nolan revealed that the most important sentence from the Batman film The Dark Knight still bothers him and also explained why.
Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy spoke to Deadline on February 21, 2024 about the successful blockbuster Oppenheimer and other projects.
The director revealed why he is still haunted by the most famous sentence from the Batman film The Dark Knight, which reads: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.” That translates to: “Either you die.” as a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.”
The line was said in the film by the character Harvey Dent, who then becomes the Batman villain Two-Face over the course of the film.
German trailer for Batman The Dark Knight
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“That kills me because it’s the sentence that resonates the most.”
“I’m plagued by a line from The Dark Knight, and I’m plagued by it because I didn’t write it,” Christopher Nolan explained in the interview.
Because his brother Jonathan was the one who came up with the idea for the iconic quote. On top of that, the director initially had little use for the statement. He told:
“That kills me because it’s the sentence that resonates the most. And at the time I didn’t even understand him. […] I read that in his draft and thought, ‘Okay, I’ll keep it in there, but I don’t know what it means. Is that really a thing?’”
Only later did he realize the truth and importance behind this statement, as the director explained: “And over the years since this film came out, it seems to become more and more true. In this story it is exactly that. Build it up, tear it down. That’s how we treat people.”
You can read more about Christopher Nolan here from our colleagues from Filmstarts: “We argued about it for a long time”: Christopher Nolan had to throw this crucial “Interstellar” detail out of the film
But even beyond that one sentence, The Dark Knight is a cinematic masterpiece. Marco from the YouTube channel Nerdkultur explains in one of his videos why you can see this in the first 5 minutes of the Batman film and what inspiration went into the beginning of Christopher Nolan’s superhero flick:
Afterwards you will see the beginning of “The Dark Knight” with different eyes