I still wish The Dark Knight Rises’ brutal cut death scene was in the final movie over a decade later

12 years after its release, I wish The Dark Knight Rises Considered a brutal death scene that was ultimately cut from the DC movie. The Dark Knight Rises is the third installment in Christopher Nolan’s timeless Dark Knight franchise and brought Christian Bale’s tenure as the Caped Crusader to a definitive end. The Dark Knight Rises was the highest-grossing of the trilogy, raking in $1.08 billion worldwide yet Batman begins And The Dark Knight Established a grittier take on the hero that landed well with audiences and defined much of Batman’s live-action history.

This grittiness is perfectly embodied by Bane – a hulking villain whose brutality was just as memorable as his character design. The visceral scene in which he breaks Batman’s back remains one of the franchise’s most unforgettable and exemplifies the franchise’s darker tone. Nevertheless, Bane would later be sidelined by the actual cunning villain of the movie: Talia Al Ghul. To turn Bane into a pawn in the film’s final act would have been divisive, not least because Talia al-Ghul had little time to develop as a truly threatening arch-villain in her own right; Not in the final cut anyway.

The Dark Knight Rises’ tragic death scene helps cement Talia Al Ghul’s villain story

Peter Foley’s original death scene was cut from the movie

After revealing Bane’s perfectly executed anarchic iteration of Gotham was all in aid of Talia al Ghul’s plan to destroy the city, Talia takes off in a Wayne Enterprises tumbler and moshes down Deputy Commissioner Foley. The scene plays out with jump cuts, showing Talia aiming for Foley in her vehicle before cutting to Foley’s corpse on the concrete. The scene was almost much more wild, however, showing the fatal point of impact and a brutal crash to the ground. The lost Dark Knight Rises Scene was reportedly violent enough to make Christopher Nolan turn white.

It is therefore no surprise that the depiction of violence is omitted from a PG-13 movie. nevertheless, I strongly believe that the short time Talia al Ghul had to make an impact would have been greatly enhanced. By this particular brutal act. Instead, the alternate, sterilized version only helped cement Talia as an ephemeral presence whose position as the movie’s real arch-villain felt unearned, never given the screen time to establish herself as a threat to be reckoned with.

The deleted death scene from The Dark Knight Rises may have helped it compare to The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight was much more violent

The Dark Knight It was a tough act to follow, especially regarding Heath Ledger’s Joker. Several scenes over The Dark Knight With Joker’s violence cement his grittier tones. This included a knife to Rachel’s cheek, the Joker’s “pencil trick”, and the lighting of Lau on top of a mountain of money, to name a few. These scenes are enough to warrant grimaces abound, cementing Joker as one of Batman’s most formidable villains because of the violence he is willing to inflict. Notably, these are all acts of violence in a movie that retained its PG-13 rating.

in comparison, The Dark Knight Rises Was much more restrained with his violence. The struggle under Wayne Enterprises was undeniably intense – especially as Bane breaks the bat – but no more extreme than Batman pummeling a crowd of​​​​ A no-holds-barred depiction of Talia al Ghul’s murder of Foley would not have just brought The Dark Knight Rises To the same violent level as its prequel, but would have helped make her appear just as cruel as Joker himself.

The Dark Knight Rises death scene is understandable (but still a shame)

The movie has to keep its PG-13 rating

Finally, if Foley’s unedited death scene is enough to make Nolan white, then Its omission from a movie with a PG-13 rating is a reason. Most modern superhero movies rely on a balance between depicting realistic violence without excluding a younger audience, and while the Dark Knight trilogy sometimes treads a fine line, enticing a more prohibitive R-rating for the sake of one violent death seems senseless. That’s even more prudent for the third installment in a PG-13 trilogy and ultimately helped it break the $1 billion mark.

Still, I wonder how much more an impact The Dark Knight Rises Could have if it leaned into a more violent depiction of its main villains. One-up Joker was always going to be a tall order, and turning both Bane and Talia Al Ghul into more wildly violent adversaries would have made for a more memorable conclusion to Nolan’s trilogy, to say the least. Regardless, I’ll admit that The Dark Knight Rises Stands on its own merits as one of the best superhero movies to date, and the decision to soften Foley’s death was a smart one.

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