With the recent release of “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan is back on the minds of film obsessives everywhere. I myself did a healthy Nolan rewatch in the weeks leading up to his new war movie, the most surprising takeaway of which was that “The Dark Knight Rises” is quite a lot better than I’d remembered.
With that in mind, the new “From Script to Screen” video essay from Legendary’s YouTube channel is a nifty little peek into the production process behind Nolan’s third and final Batman movie.
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The video is especially interesting, considering the fact that it features an extended bit of Batman-Bane hand-to-hand combat. Nolan isn’t known as an especially great director of hand-to-hand fight scenes, so it’s fascinating to watch how the fight was broken down on the page and subsequently translated, by Nolan, to the screen. It’s definitely not the best scene Nolan’s ever shot (it’s not even the best in its movie), but it is certainly interesting to analyze from a screenwriting perspective.
Interesting also to note that the script refers to the character as “BATMAN” as opposed to “BRUCE.” I suppose the script just slips into his superhero name whenever he dons the cowl. I’m curious as to whether that’s common practice in superhero screenwriting.