4. Batman Film As Historical Epic
The stakes throughout The Dark Knight Trilogy were constantly being raised, starting with the epic action/adventure movie of Batman Begins and continuing into the epic crime drama of The Dark Knight. By the time he and his team had arrived at The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan wanted to take the film into the world of the war movie and the disaster film. Perhaps Nolan was partially inspired by the great comic book arc No Mans Land, where Gotham is sealed off from the United States following a devastating Earthquake and martial law is in effect; Nolan openly stated that he was influenced by David Leans
Russian revolution epic Doctor Zhivago, and that he and co-writers Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer wanted The Dark Knight Rises to have some of the sweep of a historical epicwe were looking for a way of approaching an inversion of society a complete shattering of the structures of society not going for the post apocalyptic bleakness, going for a sense of despair that is somehow voluptuous you are able to revel in the contrast of these peoples grand stories in this extraordinarily turbulent and historic timeto try and do that with a fictional set of events was an enormous challenge.
3. One of the Winklevi Twins Grows Up to Be Henri Ducard
In flashback scenes shot specially for The Dark Knight Rises, the young Ras al Ghul played as an older man by Liam Neeson was portrayed by American actor Josh Pence. Pence is probably best known for, ironically enough,
not appearing in a movie; prior to Dark Knight Rises he where he played half of the Winklevoss Twins along with Armie Hammer in David Fincher's The Social Network; Pence would act alongside Hammer, give him someone to react to during his scenes at the Winklevoss Twins, even though Hammer would eventually play both twins onscreen. So does this pretty much make Pence the most awesome stand-in in movie history?