Cillian Murphy's screen-test for Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins is doing the rounds online again, due in large part to the Irish actor's celebrated performance in Nolan's latest, Oppenheimer.
The footage was originally released as part of a longer featurette, and shows Murphy both in-costume as the Dark Knight as he interrogates one of Carmine Falcone's men, and as Bruce Wayne during a scene with Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes).
Nolan has previously admitted that he never really felt Murphy was the right fit for this role, but the filmmaker was so impressed by his performance that he made sure Warner Bros. execs saw this footage, and was ultimately able to cast him as Jonathan Crane, aka Scarecrow.
“Everybody was so excited by watching [Cillian] perform that when I then said to them, ‘Okay, Christian Bale is Batman, but what about Cillian to play Scarecrow?’ There was no dissent,” Nolan recently told Entertainment Weekly. “All the previous Batman villains had been played by huge movie stars: Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, that kind of thing. That was a big leap for them and it really was purely on the basis of that test. So that’s how you got to play Scarecrow.”
As it turns out, Murphy never saw himself as Batman, either, and told GQ Magazine that he believed Christian Bale landing the part was "for the best."
“Yes, I think it was for the best because we got Christian Bale’s performance, which is a stunning interpretation of that role. I never considered myself as the right physical specimen for Batman. To me, it was always going to be Christian Bale.”
Have another look at the footage in the player below, and let us know if you think Murphy would have been a good pick to play the Caped Crusader in the comments.