Christopher Nolan Took A Scene Out of Dark Knight Rises That Was So Graphic It Made Matthew Modine Sick And Would Have Meant An NC-17 Rating

Bobby Bank. Getty Images.

CINEMABLEND — Like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, the conclusion to director Christopher Nolan’s take on the Batman mythology, was packed with a lot of action, but still walked away with a PG-13 rating, as so many comic book movies do. However, there’s a scenario where The Dark Knight Rises would have been stamped NC-17, and Nolan avoided that simply by removing the original death scene for Matthew Modine’s character.

The Dark Knight Rises — etched in stone in my top 10. Not comic book top 10 or superhero top 10. All time, all genres. I don't think that's really that hot of a take. Liking it better than The Dark Knight probably is. But that's my opinion, the heart thinks what the heart thinks and Bane edges out Joker for me. Feel free to let me know how dumb that is in the comments that I definitely will be reading every word no doubt about it. 

HOWEVER there is a reason I didn't say top 5, and that's because of the glaring directing blunder in the big Wall Street standoff. Yes I'm talking about the fact that Commissioner Gordon's second-in-command Peter Foley's death was NOT on-screen and we were left to infer it, NOT see his body get treated like the head in the Scanners GIF as we were hoping for. 

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Here's the clip from the ReelBlend podcast:

He cut my death scene out of Dark Knight Rises. Because he said it was so violent that it would have gotten an NC-17 rating. … Marion Cotillard -- after Bane dies and Batman, Chris [Bale] gets stabbed, she gets in one of those vehicles. She starts to drive away, and I’m shooting at her. And I got run over. All it does is, it just cuts, and I’m on the ground, dead. But it was so violent. The guy that was doubling me got hit by the car. They put a plexiglass thing on the front of [the car] and he got hit. They had ropes to pull him into the air, but he went up and they dropped him from about 15 feet, and the sound of his body hitting the cobblestone street in front of the New York Stock Exchange, it was sickening. And I remember I looked at Christopher Nolan when we shot it and his face was white. 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. 

Nolan revitalized the Batman character by pushing boundaries and going darker and moodier than anyone before. Only he knows why he lost his nerve on the 3rd movie of the trilogy and robbed us of a chance to see a secondary character's redemption arc end with getting hit by a car at speeds high enough to rip his body clean in half as the GCPD and Bane's forces were showered with guts and blood and tripped on intestines while the torso sailed off to like Hanover Square. Some directors just don't have the balls to stand up to the studios who are more focused on making money and paying salaries and being successful than they are on making art. 

Could have been one of the greats.

PS

You know who's writing that and NOT being sarcastic? The stunt guy that had to film it and then didn't make the movie.

I know I'm not the toughest guy but still it seems like even top of the line helmets and padding don't erase the pain from something that drains a professional veteran actor's blood from his face. When a co-star describes your scene like this —

…it was so violent. The guy that was doubling me got hit by the car. They put a plexiglass thing on the front of [the car] and he got hit. They had ropes to pull him into the air, but he went up and they dropped him from about 15 feet, and the sound of his body hitting the cobblestone street in front of the New York Stock Exchange, it was sickening. And I remember I looked at Christopher Nolan when we shot it and his face was white. 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?’ 

— you wanna know at least it's in one of the biggest movies of all time as you settle in for your multi-year hospital stay.