16 years ago, a scene from The Dark Knight produced one of the most striking lines in film history. However, Christopher Nolan didn’t actually write it himself. And that still annoys him
“You die a hero or you live until you become the villain.” The line from Christopher Nolan’s Batman sequel The Dark Knight has burned itself into film history and pop culture like “Rosebud” or “I’m looking you in the eye, kiddo”. 16 years after the movie’s release, Nolan admits: The line wasn’t even his. He didn’t even understand it at the beginning.
The Dark Knight scene still annoys Christopher Nolan to this day
According to Deadline Nolan explains:
One line from The Dark Knight plagues me because I didn’t write it myself. It was written by my brother Jonathan Nolan. It kills me because it’s the most resonant of all the lines. At first I didn’t understand it at all. The line is: ‘You die a hero or you live until you become the bad guy. At the time I just said: ‘All right, I’ll leave the sentence in, but I don’t understand it. Does it really make sense?’
Watch one of the Dark Knight scenes with the famous line here:
In the years since the film’s release, however, the phrase has become more and more meaningful to him, says Nolan. The story of the film is about how we “build others up and let them down. That’s how we treat people.”
The phrase is used at several points in the movie. For example, it is used by Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) as a kind of credo that anticipates his development from selfless prosecutor to maniacal villain Two-Face.
