Christopher Nolan may still be coming down from the hype surrounding Oppenheimer, but he has a lot of solid movies in his filmography that a lot of fans will definitely turn to when thinking about him—like The Dark Knight.
As it turns out, there is one line in The Dark Knight that seemingly haunts Nolan, and it’s the quote from Harvey Dent where he says, “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Talking to Deadline, Nolan explains why this line has seemingly haunted him since it wasn’t him that even thought to put it in the movie. He says, “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. 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.'”
Here’s the scene from the movie:
“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?’”, said Nolan, “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.”
For now, Nolan has finally become hands off of DC projects—especially after helping set the tone for the DCEU producing Man of Steel. We don’t know if he’ll ever jump into comic book films again, but some are convinced he would love a hand at a Bond movie down the line.
Nolan’s next project hasn’t been announced yet, but fans have their fingers crossed for an Albert Einstein-centric biopic spinoff of Oppenheimer.
