There’s something about the grandiose nature of superhero movie dialogue that roots itself deep in your brain and sticks there, sometimes for years.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.
Or what about, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”?
Christopher Nolan recently shared a fascinating admission about one of the most quoted lines from The Dark Knight. And it wasn’t even something he wrote.
The Line Nolan Never Wrote
In a joint Deadline interview with Cillian Murphy, Nolan confessed he didn’t initially understand the depth of his brother Jonathan Nolan’s now-iconic line.
The director kept the line in the script despite his confusion, and years later, it’s become one of cinema’s most resonant moments.
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In the scene, Harvey Dent and Rachel are interrupted at dinner by Bruce Wayne, who (in his playboy persona) pokes fun at Dent for his public persona as a justice figure in Gotham.
Subtextually, the scene works so well because Dent doesn’t know he’s talking to Batman, who is absorbing the message he thinks he needs to hear most at that moment.
In the interview, Nolan admitted he didn’t really understand the line at first.
“I’m plagued by a line from The Dark Knight, and I’m plagued by it because I didn’t write it. 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.”Collaboration Requires Trust
For some context, Nolan and Murphy were discussing Oppenheimer, another story about a brilliant figure who went from celebrated hero to pariah. The physicist became a punching bag in a political kangaroo court after helping end World War II, a trajectory that echoes Harvey Dent’s fall in The Dark Knight.
One of cinema’s most celebrated directors admits he trusted his brother’s instincts even when he didn’t fully grasp the line or its significance. That kind of creative trust is rare, especially when you’re the person making final decisions on a massive studio film.
There’s a lesson here about collaboration, and it’s important.
‘The Dark Knight’Credit: Warner Bros.
Swing Big, Tone Down Later
We can see that great writing can be ahead of its time, even for the person directing it. Themes that feel abstract or overly philosophical in a first draft can become the emotional anchors audiences remember years later. You can swing big and tone down later if you need to on those ideas.
The line works because it’s simple and feels true to how public opinion operates—we elevate people and then tear them down with equal enthusiasm when they have a misstep.
For screenwriters, this could also be a nudge to trust lines that resonate on an instinctive level, even if you can’t articulate exactly why they work. Sometimes the best writing operates on a frequency you won’t fully understand until you’re living in the world that proves it true.
Nolan kept the line because it felt right. We all wish we had that kind of creative intuition, so try developing it by reading a lot and consuming diverse media, not just movies. Get to know talented collaborators who might see something you don’t, then trust them.
The fact that this particular line has only grown more relevant tells us something else about an effective theme. Whatever you’re writing, the heart of your idea should feel timeless.