The Christopher Nolan Batman Franchise has been a unique and popular addition to the lure of the caped crusader.. But one scene that was apparently removed almost put the film into NC-17 waters.
The Dark Knight Rises would have been stamped NC-17, and Nolan avoided that simply by removing the original death scene for Matthew Modine’s character.
Modine talked about this during an appearance on CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast to promote the 4K release of his 1987 movie Full Metal Jacket:
He cut my death scene out of Dark Knight Rises. Because he said it was so violent that it would have gotten an NC-17 rating. … Marion Cotillard — after Bane dies and Batman, Chris [Bale] gets stabbed, she gets in one of those vehicles. She starts to drive away, and I’m shooting at her. And I got run over. All it does is, it just cuts, and I’m on the ground, dead. But it was so violent. The guy that was doubling me got hit by the car. They put a plexiglass thing on the front of [the car] and he got hit. They had ropes to pull him into the air, but he went up and they dropped him from about 15 feet, and the sound of his body hitting the cobblestone street in front of the New York Stock Exchange, it was sickening. And I remember I looked at Christopher Nolan when we shot it and his face was white. He was like, ‘OK, let’s move on. We got that.’ But it was like, ‘Oh my God, is that guy going to get up? Is he okay?’ But [Nolan] said that if he would have put it in the movie, it would’ve got an NC-17 rating because it was so violent.
Now the NC-17 commentary is an opinion from Modine–not official.
Modine may be right on how the violent aspect of DKR would have been more intense, there are plenty of other films that feature mild gore and still end up with a PG-13 or an R..
It may be unfair to critique Modine’s commentary in such a way–but most news sites are throwing headlines up treating it as fact..
Without seeing the actual scene it is difficult to tell.
Perhaps Modine is right..
The scene’s gore would have earned the score.