This Dark Knight Rises Scene Was So Gory and Brutal That Nolan Cut It Out
The last movie of The Dark Knight trilogy almost broke its perfect PG-13 rating with one incredibly violent and sickening scene… But it was too much even for Nolan.
Christopher Nolan is one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed movie directors in the world, and while he has quite a track record to show, there are peculiar similarities in his films. Many people like to point out that Nolan’s protagonist is always a middle-aged white man, but there’s another catch: his movies’ ratings.
Not the audience scores, mind you. We’re talking about the fact that every single movie that Christopher Nolan ever released was strictly PG-13. Even though the upcoming Oppenheimer is set to become the director’s first R-rated film, one of Nolan’s previous movies almost earned itself an entire NC-17 rating!
The Dark Knight Rises was this close to becoming Christopher Nolan’s one and only NC-17 movie thanks to one scene that turned out so violent and gory that the director ultimately decided to cut it out altogether and forget it ever existed at all.
In the original TDK Rises script, Gotham’s Deputy Police Commissioner was supposed to be run over to death by Talia al Ghul’s vehicle after Bane’s death. The filming crew shot the scene, but even director Nolan felt ‘sickened’ by it.
“It was so violent… The guy that was doubling me got hit by the car, and the sound of his body hitting the cobblestone street in front of the New York Stock Exchange, it was sickening. I remember I looked at Christopher Nolan when we shot it and his face was white,” recalls Matthew Modine who played the Commissioner.
Despite even his own first reaction Christopher Nolan almost wanted to leave this scene in the movie — but then quickly changed his mind and decided against it as he realized what this would mean for the film’s rating.
“He was like, ‘Ok, let’s move on. We got that.’ But it was like, ‘Oh my God, is that guy going to get up? Is he okay?’ But [Nolan] said that if he would have put it in the movie, it would’ve got an NC-17 rating because it was so violent,” explained Modine.
In the end, the Commissioner was written off as Nolan decided against reshooting his death: as we learn later, the Commish died in a gunfight with Bane’s followers.
Source: Reelblend Podcast