Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is a family of films full of incredible, memorable moments. Filmmakers are often very cagey when it comes to saying one scene or another is their favorite (like parents saying they love all their children equally), but Nolan recently revealed that he does in fact have a preferred scene from the saga, and it is indeed a doozy.
Talking with Foxcatcher and Moneyball director Bennett Miller at the Tribeca Film Festival recently, as witnessed by Long Live Cinema, Nolan was asked what scene from his trio of Batman films is his favorite, and he wasted little time disclosing that it is that incredible scene where Bane (Tom Hardy) and his cronies hijack a plane in midair early in The Dark Knight Rises.
That is definitely an intense scene in an intense movie, and one that was crazy complex to film as Nolan tried to use predominantly practical special effects, keeping the digital work to a minimum. Talking about the intricate, involved shooting process, Nolan said:
It took us about two days in Scotland. And it was an incredible sort of coming together of months and months of planning by a lot of different members of the team who worked for months rehearsing these parachute jumps and wind walking, all these different things… The visual effects work in the sequence is very minimal… I was really amazed by what the team we had put together had achieved using very sort of old-fashioned methods, in a way. I was very proud of the way that came together.
If you need a refresher, check out the scene in question below.
Even if you’re not a fan of Christopher Nolan’s films, you have to admit, the man can craft one hell of a cinematic spectacle. His latest, Interstellar, may have left some cold, but the visuals of Matthew McConaughey and company hurtling through space, skirting black holes, is nothing short of breathtaking, as are that rotating hallway fight scene in Inception and the entire city folding in on itself.
Fans are generally split on The Dark Knight Rises as a whole, but starting a movie with a masked terrorist pulling a plane out of the sky and planting a fake body to be found in the rubble is one hell of a way to kick things off. This is definitely an innovative, attention grabbing moment, and it isn’t difficult to see why Nolan claims it is his favorite from his Batman trilogy. Not many filmmakers would even attempt something on this scale, let alone pull it off.
