A Tale Of Two Gothams: Charles Dickens Cited As Source For The Dark Knight Rises

News by Dave Reuss July 10, 2012 2 comments

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Charles Dickens Cited As Source For The Dark Knight Rises

With buzz for The Dark Knight Rises reaching full steam, the film's crew just released the biggest spoiler imaginable: the movie's plot—which is apparently sourced from the classic 1859 Dickens novel A Tale Of Two Cities. The film's director, Christopher Nolan, was quoted at a recent press conference discussing the similarities between the book and the screenplay.

"When Jonah [Jonathan Nolan] showed me his first draft of his screenplay, it was 400 pages long or something. It had all this crazy stuff in it. As part of a primer when he handed it to me, he said, 'You've got to think of A Tale of Two Cities which, of course, you've read.' I said, 'Absolutely.'

I read the script and was a little baffled by a few things and realized that I'd never read A Tale of Two Cities. It was just one of those things that I thought I had done. Then I got it, read it and absolutely loved it and got completely what he was talking about... When I did my draft on the script, it was all about A Tale of Two Cities."

Since I don't have several hundred dollars to spend on opening night tickets via eBay, I might just have to read some Dickens to fill the Batman-shaped void in my life. Wanna read Two Cities for free? As it's old enough to qualify as public domain, you can pick it up here.