Christopher Nolan says one line from The Dark Knight “plagues him”

There’s lots to love about The Dark Knight, but director Christopher Nolan has complicated feelings about one of the most iconic lines from the Batman movie.

Although Christopher Nolan is riding the wave of acclaim from Oppenheimer this award season, many fans still call back to 2008’s The Dark Knight as his best work.

Sure enough, the gritty, sophisticated take on Batman has stood out within the ranks as one of the best iterations of the character. That’s all thanks to Nolan, who’s since ditched the superhero genre after rounding out his Dark Knight trilogy.

An unforgettable villain and incendiary set pieces are just part of what fans love about The Dark Knight — it also gave us one of the greatest lines now associated with the ideology of Bruce Wayne. But it turns out, it’s a line that Nolan has some regrettable feelings towards.

Famous line from The Dark Knight “plagues” Christopher Nolan

In an interview with Deadline, Christopher Nolan admitted that the most famous line from The Dark Knight “plagues” him, because it wasn’t one he wrote.

“I’m plagued by a line from The Dark Knight, and I’m plagued by it because I didn’t write it,” he said. “My brother [Jonathan] wrote it. It kills me, because it’s the line that most resonates. And at the time, I didn’t even understand it.

“He says, ‘You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.’ I read it in his draft, and I was like, ‘All right, I’ll keep it in there, but I don’t really know what it means. Is that really a thing?’ And then, over the years since that film’s come out, it just seems truer and truer. In this story, it’s absolutely that. Build them up, tear them down. It’s the way we treat people.”

The line itself isn’t even spoken by Bruce Wayne. It’s Harvey Dent who says it, and the line goes on to serve as the ethos for the entire movie. With Batman battling against the Joker, who’s attempting to appeal to his most diabolical instincts, it’s a perfect summary of what Nolan is trying to explore.

Nolan has always taken to writing his projects alongside others — namely, this brother Jonathan. However, his last few movies (Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer) have had him as the sole screenwriting credit.

With an Oscar nomination under his belt for Best Adapted Screenplay for Oppenheimer, it seems as though he can probably think about moving on from that haunting Dark Knight line.