Christopher Nolan Cut Out a Brutal Death Scene in 'Dark Knight Rises' to Avoid NC-17 rating
“I remember I looked at Christopher Nolan when we shot it and his face was white.”
During his recent appearance on Cinema Blend‘s podcast ReelBlend, American actor Matthew Modine recounted his character Deputy Commissioner Peter Foley’s death scene in Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight Rises, revealing that the director had originally shot a much more brutal depiction but ultimately decided to cut it from the final release in order to avoid an NC-17 rating.
“All it does is, it just cuts, and I’m on the ground, dead. But it was so violent,” the actor recalls. “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.”
“I remember I looked at Christopher Nolan when we shot it and his face was white,” he continued. “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.”
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