Even well over a decade since the movie hit theaters, people still talk about Talia al Ghul's (Marion Cotillard) death scene in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises - and generally not in a very positive light.
Towards the end of the final part of Nolan's acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy, Talia - who went by the name Miranda Tate for most of the movie until her true identity was revealed - succumbs to her injuries following a devastating crash, and her final moments are... well, you've all watched the scene in question!
Cotillard was asked about the infamous sequence during an interview with France TV, and seemed to shoulder most of the responsibility for how the scene turned out.
“I couldn't find the right position. I was stressed. Sometimes it happens, we screw something up. And this, I screwed up."
To be fair, the actor isn't in control of what does and doesn't make the final cut of a film, and Nolan is the one that ultimately decided this was the take he was going to use!
Cotillard did have a slightly different view of her character's death scene while speaking to Allocine back in 2016 (translated from French).
“We’re all in the same boat, and if sometimes it gets out of control, then everyone is involved. Sometimes there are failures, and when you see this on screen, you’re thinking: ‘Why? Why did they keep that take?’ But either you blame everyone or nobody. But I thought people overreacted, because it was tough to be identified just with this scene. When I’m doing the best I can to find the authenticity in every character that I’m playing, it’s tough to be known just for this scene.”
This is just one of those things that's probably going to be brought up many more times over the course of Cotillard's career, which is a shame, because Nolan is really the one interviewers should be asking about the scene!
What do you make of Talia al Ghul's death scene in The Dark Knight Rises? Do people give it too much stick, or is it deserving of the ridicule it still gets to this day? Drop us a comment, and have another look at the sequence in the player below.
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