What Happened to The Dark Knight Rises?

Last Updated on March 17, 2023

In the pantheon of great trilogies lies such classics as The Back to the Future trilogy, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Star Wars: The Original Trilogy and last but certainly not least: The Dark Knight Trilogy. Shepherded by a filmmaker who at that point had been untested in the blockbuster market. So as we sit here wondering what the future holds for the DC Cinematic Universe, we ask that age old question: WTF Happened to The Dark Knight Rises?!

Christopher Nolan got his start making the ultra low budget film Following about a writer who follows people to get inspiration for his book and gets sucked into the criminal underworld. Filmed for just 3000 pounds, the film would garner much praise in the festival circuit. Which would give Nolan some clout, which he used to get his next script, Memento, into the hands of Aaron Ryder from Newmarket Films. Showing how much faith the little studio had in the project, after Memento was rejected by all major studios, they agreed to finance and distribute the film with a budget of $4.5 million, a gamble that would pay off as the movie, with its backwards storytelling, garnered great word of mouth on its way to a $40 million finish. Nolan would also receive an Oscar Nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the film, giving his name even more recognition in the industry.

It would be Oscar Winning Director Steven Soderbergh who would be so impressed with Memento that he would recommend Nolan to Warner Brothers to direct their remake of the 1997 Norwegian thriller Insomnia. The studio initially balked at this idea as they wanted a director with a little more experience under their belt, but ultimately relented because Following and Memento are two phenomenal movies! The film, starring Academy Award Winners Al Pacino, Hilary Swank and an incredible Robin Williams in his dark phase, would garner strong reviews and ultimately make over $113 million against a $46 million budget, putting him in the good graces of one of the biggest movie studios in the world. Soon after, Nolan would pen a screenplay for a biopic on the life of Howard Hughes but would shelve it when the Martin Scorsese directed Aviator was announced. He would then turn down the offer to direct the Brad Pitt starring epic Troy.

But one thing Nolan did want to do, one character that he felt he could take on, was a character whose last appearance on the big screen featured nipples on the suit and an actor inside of it who quite frankly didn’t want to be there! Nolan would approach Warner Brothers executives with a fresh take on Batman saying that he wanted to take it back to the beginning and show this super hero in a more real world scenario rather than the more cartoony way he had been presented in his last two live action outings (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin).

Not long after, Nolan would bring on writer David S. Goyer to help craft his vision for this more realistic take on the character. Filming on Batman Begins would commence in March 2004 with the film hitting theaters on June 15, 2005 where it would open with $48 million which many saw as a decent, if not overly spectacular number. However word of mouth was strong and Batman Begins was able to net $150 million domestic and $373 million worldwide with critics and audiences equally impressed with the fresh, dark and realistic take on the decades old character. But as great as that movie was, there was one scene that got the audience to cheer louder than I have ever heard an audience cheer in a movie theater: When Gordon hands Batman the playing card with the Joker on it.

That scene was one of the best teases for a sequel I had ever witnessed and beginning the next day the internet was flooded with fans arguing over who should play the iconic character in the now highly anticipated follow up. While Nolan would go off and make the excellent magician film The Prestige, fans pitched who they thought would be best for the role made so famous by Cesar Romero and of course Jack Nicholson. One name that pretty much nobody had on their list was Heath Ledger, who at the time was best known for his Oscar Nominated performance in Brokeback Mountain as well as a string of more independent films. If you were on the internet in August 2006 you may have seen some of the angriest comments you had ever read when it was announced Ledger would be taking on the iconic psychotic villain, with people vowing to never see the film because Ledger was going to ruin the character! I’m sure glad the internet has gotten better since then…! Long story short, Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight remains one of the greatest performances ever captured on film and the internet is full of morons (but not you all watching this video, you all are all incredibly intelligent with great taste in entertainment!) He would go on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and would have many people saying “Nicholson who?”

Sadly, Ledger was never able to enjoy the vast success of his performance as at 3:36pm on January 22, 2008, Ledger was pronounced dead in his Manhattan apartment from what was later determined to be an accidental overdose of several prescription medicines.

The news sent shockwaves throughout the Hollywood community as not only was Ledger a respected performer, but the limited footage released for The Dark Knight looked like it was something special. And as we all now know, his performance was special, reinventing what it meant to be a comic book villain and becoming only the second person to win a posthumous Academy Award for acting. As for the film, it would become one of the biggest comic book films ever released opening to nearly $160 million on its way to over a billion dollars worldwide and would have ramifications on the Academy Awards that are still felt today as when it failed to be one of the final five nominated for Best Picture, the backlash was so fervant that the following year the Academy announced they were expanding the category to allow up to ten nominees as a way to help get more popular films such as The Dark Knight nominated (Steven Spielberg has since said the movie deserved a nomination).

The Dark Knight kept things open ended with the Joker character, at the end of the film he was still alive and the plan, as mapped out in David S. Goyer’s original three film treatment, was to see the third film follow The Joker’s trial. Of course Goyer’s original treatment wouldn’t have seen Harvey Dent turn into Two Face until the third film when the Joker douses Dent with Acid during the trial, something that Nolan decided to rework and move up to the second film. But the plan was to bring back Ledger’s Joker for the second sequel, which Ledger’s sister confirmed after his death saying that Ledger was fully committed to returning to the role because he absolutely loved making the movie.

So with the original concept having to be tossed due to tragic circumstances, Nolan wasn’t even sure he wanted to go back to Gotham City. He said he could only see making a third film if he felt emotionally invested and that he didn’t want to start on a third film only to feel it was unnecessary half way through filming and even questioned how many good third movies in a franchise can people name? He would go off and make a little movie called Inception which would be nominated for Best Picture as well as score a Screenplay nomination for Nolan and again be a massive financial hit for Nolan and the studio as it came close to hitting a billion worldwide, which is quite the feat for an original story without any superheroes!

The studio really wanted a sequel to The Dark Knight, and they even pitched Nolan on making the main villain for the third film The Riddler and bringing in his Inception star Leonardo DiCaprio to play him. But Nolan wasn’t interested in that, saying that the Riddler was too similar to The Joker. If he was going to come back for a third film, he wanted an antagonist who was the exact opposite of Joker, someone physically imposing. He decided that Bane, the underutilized villain whose only previous big screen exposure was a small role in the infamous Batman & Robin, would be the perfect adversary for Batman in a third film.

Nolan would draw inspiration from three Batman comic book stories: The Dark Knight Returns which follows Batman as he returns after a ten year absence, No Man’s Land which sees Gotham City cut off from the rest of the world and Knightfall which is hailed as the quintessential Bane story arc in the comics. He would combine those stories with a bit of an unlikely source: Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities which is a famous story that follows the Reign of Terror that occurred after the French Revolution. Nolan saw comparisons of his Gotham City with that of the social unrest and violence present in the timeless classic and would even give homage to the book in the scene where Bane is seen knitting in the back of the makeshift courtroom run by Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow, as that is a direct reference to Tale of Two Cities’ Madame Defarge who liked to knit as she watched executions. Nolan would also give homage in the ending when Commissioner Gordon directly quotes from the novel in his eulogy for Bruce Wayne.

So with Nolan officially coming back for a third and final outing, he and his brother Jonathan went off to write the script with their first draft clocking in at over 400 pages. Eventually they were able to whittle it down to a filmable length and they would start the process of hiring the crew. Nolan would again bring on Wally Pfister as Director of Photography whom had been Nolan’s Cinematographer since Memento and was fresh off an Oscar win for his phenomenal work on Inception.

Then it was time to cast, as most of us know, Nolan likes to cast familiar faces. It speaks to how much people love working with the director as they keep coming back time and time again to be in his films. Nolan had only one choice for Bane, his Inception star Tom Hardy, who accepted the role without even reading the script. He would get to work quick, putting on 30 pounds of muscle to play the intimidating role of the man who famously broke Batman’s back. Of course at 5’9”, Hardy was a bit shorter than his costar Christian Bale, so they added lifts to his shoes to make him appear more imposing to the 6 foot tall Bale. Hardy would base his voice on famed Irish Bare Knuckle Boxer Bartley Gorman, which must have worked as his Bane voice is one of the most imitated in movie history. Next up was the role of Selina Kyle, who contrary to popular belief is never actually called Catwoman in the film, only being referenced as The Cat in a newspaper headline. Nolan would consider such names as Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley, Gemma Arterton, Blake Lively and Lady Gaga for the role of Selina Kyle with the final three reportedly being narrowed down to Jessica Biel, Kate Mara and Anne Hathaway.

Hathaway said this was one role she desperately wanted. She had actually been cast as Black Cat in Sam Raimi’s unmade Spider-Man 4 before the project was scrapped. She says that she went to her audition thinking it was for the role of Harley Quinn and had been preparing for that, even dressing a certain way, but in the middle of meeting with Nolan he told her it was for Catwoman which made her convinced she wasn’t getting the job even though playing Catwoman had been a dream of hers. She says that after the audition she was a nervous wreck waiting to hear from her agent if she had gotten the role and one day the phone rang and her agent asked if she was sitting down, Hathaway says she immediately screamed “I’M CATWOMAN!!” Hathaway recalls that after her excitement subsided, her agent said that it wasn’t the Catwoman call but rather the Academy had asked her to host that years Oscars, something I’m sure in hindsight she wishes she had turned down! Of course a few weeks later the call did come, and Hathaway was officially cast as Selina Kyle aKa Catwoman.

For two other coveted roles, Nolan again turned to his Inception cast with Joseph Gordon-Levitt cast as beat cop John Blake aka Robin John Blake after passing on such names as Ryan Gosling and Mark Ruffalo. While the role of Miranda Tate, was always meant for Marion Cotillard. At the time Cotillard was pregnant and other names were considered including Kate Winslet and Rachel Weisz, but Nolan saw no one but Cotillard in the role of Talia Al Ghul and even reworked the films schedule so that she could give birth and have some time off before coming to film her scenes. While the role of Jen, Selina Kyle’s partner in crime would go to the always great Ted Lasso star Juno Temple. And you may even recognize a subtle Memento nod as the great Thomas Lennon plays yet another doctor in this film (or is he the same doctor?!)

For his part, Christian Bale would prove his dedication to the role yet again. When he was cast in Batman Begins he had recently come off filming The Machinist where he weighed an unhealthy 120 pounds and would have to bulk up to around 200 to convincingly play the role. For The Dark Knight, Bale had just come off working on his Oscar Winning role in The Fighter where he dropped down to 145 pounds and had to bulk back up to that 200 mark again and for The Dark Knight Rises, Bale was coming off another starvation role in Rescue Dawn before having to bulk back up for Batman shape. After Rises he would yet again transform his body for a role, this time going the other direction and putting on quite the gut for American Hustle. Bale has said those body transformations have taken their toll on him and he has decided to quit going to those extremes for roles.

The Dark Knight Rises would begin production on May 6, 2011 in India and would go until November 14 under the fake title Magnus Rex. Despite the rumors, Nolan says he never considered using old footage of Heath Ledger as The Joker in this film as he felt that would be a disservice to the memory of the late great actor. The globe trotting production would go from India to Wales to Glasgow to London to Pittsburgh and even New Jersey. Pittsburgh would serve as the main city used for Gotham after a producer noted that over the past two movies they filmed in every inch of Chicago possible. Luckily one of the films Producers had strong ties to the city, Thomas Tull just so happened to be a part owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and would allow the production to shoot one of its more memorable scenes at the stadium. That scene was meant to take place in the dead of winter, but as with any Christmas movie you have ever seen, it was filmed mainly in the summer time. At the time Pittsburgh was experiencing one of the worst heat waves it had seen in years. So next time you watch the film and see all of those background performers in the stands in heavy coats and scarves, just remember that it was around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (or 37.7 degrees celsius) that day!

As meticulous as we all think Christopher Nolan is, he still allows his actors freedom within the scene. Hardy’s scene at the football stadium where he says “That’s a lovely lovely voice” was an improvisation by Hardy as was the part where Bane rests his hand on Daggett’s shoulder right before he kills him. We often think of Improv in the service of comedy films, but here you can see that perfectly placed improv in any film can truly enhance all performances, comedic or villainous. This would help Hardy in the fight scenes as well as he said they were tough to shoot, not physically but because it felt as though he was beating up his childhood hero, yet when Nolan called Action, he would just swing away!

The one thing Nolan was very aware of during filming was spoilers. On Batman Begins he had the freedom to shoot where he wanted and not worry about leaks because there was no expectations, but when Rises was in production he knew that every paparazzi in the world would try to sneak shots to release to the public. The biggest spoiler would have been the fact that Batman aka Bruce Wayne actually dies at the end (or does he?! We will get to that in a moment). On the day of shooting the funeral scene, the gravestone that was used didn’t say Bruce Wayne on it, it said Miranda Tate, with Bruce Wayne being added to the stone in post. Even more, Christian Bale was on set that day in full black suit and tie and was featured first on the days call sheet. This was done so that if any pictures leaked, Bale would be clearly in the shot and if by any chance the production call sheet got out, Bale’s name would be front and center, throwing off anyone to the tragic truth of the scene. Of course as we all know, in that final montage of the film, we see Bruce alive and well, sitting across from his new beau Selina Kyle, as she wears his mothers’ pearls, at a cafe in Florence as Bruce looks over and gives Alfred a knowing nod. And yes, Bruce Wayne is alive and well in that final scene! In several interviews after the films release both Bale and Michael Caine have said that Bruce was 100% in that cafe having finally freed himself of the privilege and burden of being Batman. Also, the shooting script for the film even says they are alive. So that’s that, Bruce Wayne survived The Dark Knight Rises!

One weird cut in the movie is the death of Matthew Modine’s police officer character Peter Foley. And there is a very specific reason for that. His death scene was actually filmed, yet when Nolan saw the cut in the movie, his death was so shocking and intense that he feared if he kept it in the film, it would garner an NC17 rating, so he decided to cut it. I am of a different mindset though, let the MPAA give you the NC17 before you cut it, but I’m also not an Academy Award nominated filmmaker (yet!)

The teaser trailer would premiere in front of screenings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and the full theatrical trailer would premiere before prints of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows while the films prologue would be released in front of Imax exclusive showings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol which would feature the entire opening of the film on the airplane. An airplane that Nolan actually crashed instead of using CGI effects. As a matter of fact, this film would only feature 500 VFX shots as opposed to a film like Avengers: Endgame that featured over 2700. But one unanticipated side effect of this prologue release was the fact that audiences around the world simply didn’t understand it. The consensus among all movie goers was “What the hell was Bane saying?!” Which resulted in the audio team going back and actually re-recording some of the dialogue while cleaning the rest up before its eventual release. A Christopher Nolan film with sound issues… who woulda thunk it?!

Now it came time to score the film and Nolan invited James Newton Howard back to collaborate with Hans Zimmer as they had on the two previous films. However James Newton Howard decided to pass on the opportunity saying that Zimmer and Nolan had built up such great chemistry while working on Inception together that he would feel like a third wheel coming back on for Rises.

Tickets for the films midnight Imax screenings in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles would go on sale in January 2012, a full six months before the release date, and would sell out within minutes with scalpers charging upwards of $100 shortly after. Anticipation for the concluding chapter of Christopher Nolan’s epic trilogy was at a fever pitch.

The Dark Knight Rises would be released on July 20, 2012, sadly the release was forever marred when a cowardly person entered a midnight screening of the film in Aurora, Colorado and opened fired on the nearly sold out audience, killing twelve innocent people and wounding 70 other. Out of respect for the victims of this terrible tragedy a massive media blitz by the films stars was canceled. Bale would use the time to go to Aurora and visit some of the victims in the hospital. He has since said that he has never actually sat down to watch the film because it is too hard for him to watch knowing what happened.

Although the budget was reported as high as $300 million, with tax credits, the actual spend on the film was around $230 million and with that type of money in play, it would need to reach at least $600 million to even begin to be considered profitable. Luckily the fans showed up and the film would ultimately top out at the worldwide box office with just under $1.1 Billion (with a B). Despite many unfavorable comparisons to its predecessor, it was still a critical darling with critics saying it finished Nolan’s trilogy in spectacular fashion. Audiences would agree giving it an A cinemascore and it would go on to be nominated for a plethora of awards including a Grammy for Best Score. What’s more, in the years since its release, The Dark Knight Rises has been featured on numerous “Best of” lists including Empire Magazines 301 Greatest Movies of All Time list, Total Film Magazines Best Movies of the 2010’s list and even number 7 on Rolling Stone’s 15 Greatest Super Hero Movies Readers poll. AFI would even name it in their top ten films of the year for 2012.

Christian Bale did say that Warner Brothers approached him about doing a fourth film in the series, but he politely turned them down saying he would only ever return if Christopher Nolan was at the helm, and that seems unlikely, although Nolan himself has said he would be open to coming back to the world if a story ever came to him that he felt was worthy of telling. So even though the door seems shut on a fourth film, someone did crack a window!

And that is WTF Happened to The Dark Knight Rises!