After the monumental success of The Dark Knight, reaching that height again with the next entry in the trilogy was never going to be an easy task for Christopher Nolan. And even though The Dark Knight remains the best in the series, The Dark Knight Rises, despite its issues, was a worthy successor, especially the opening aircraft hijack sequence with Tom Hardy’s Bane.
Like The Dark Knight‘s opening, the beginning minutes of the TDKR give fans the introduction of the main antagonist, and for the latter, Nolan went way too extreme with his methods to attain practical effects. And considering it was first showcased as a sneak peek before Ml 4, fans recalled being in awe by the sequence, with some even mistaking TDKR‘s opening a year later to be a rip-off of Ghost Protocol.
Fans Recall Watching the Iconic Tom Hardy’s Opening Scene From The Dark Knight Rises
Considering Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise is no stranger to its reliance on practical effects than resorting to CGI, Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises was no different in that regard. Fans on X recalled experiencing the Tom Hardy-led sequence before Ghost Protocol on the big screen, being amazed by its brilliance, which Nolan has deemed his proudest achievement as a director. But this also made some viewers feel confused a year later when TDKR dropped, as they were confused by the opening being eerie similar to Ghost Protocol, failing to recall it was a sneak peek.
I took my dad to see Ghost Protocol and then The Dark Knight Rises months later. He turned to me after this sequence and said: “This is just a ripoff of that Mission: Impossible movie.” He’d completely forgotten it played as a sneak peek. https://t.co/dru4kuPPiU
— Jeff Zhang 张佶润 (@strangeharbors) February 7, 2024
The Dark Knight bank heist opening is some of the best first 5 min of cinema. I didn’t think he could match it with TDKR, but damn he met the challenge.
— Seth Arp (@setharp27) February 7, 2024
Saw it with mission impossible too and just floored
— Jon Palmer (@jon_palmer4133) February 7, 2024
Saw this trailer at the Navy Pier IMAX as well and was equally floored. God I miss that place.
— Yathan Nackel (@nathanyackel) February 7, 2024
This scene was psychotic. Totally had me convinced this was 1:1 scale. Blew my mind.
— Paul Martens (@PaulMartens) February 8, 2024
While the Tom Hardy-led threequel is often overlooked when fans look back at the trilogy that changed the comic book landscape, it still holds up exceptionally well despite some plot conveniences.
Christopher Nolan Dropped the C-130 Plane for Real in The Dark Knight Rises
Like Ghost Protocol had Tom Cruise climbing the Burj Khalifa, arguably one of the most iconic stunts Cruise has pulled off so far, the Tom Hardy-led scene had Nolan drop a real C-130 plane from the sky. Reflecting on the insane feat he accomplished along with the crew, who pulled off the sequence in 2 days, for which they rehearsed for months, Nolan reasonably deemed it his proudest moment as a director. He said (via Business Insider),
“I was very proud of how that came together…It was sort of an incredible coming together of lots and lots of planning by a lot of members of the team who worked for months rehearsing all these parachute jumps,”
In a behind-the-scenes featurette, stunt coordinator Tom Struthers commented on Nolan’s tactics of always pushing new boundaries, stating,
“With Chris Nolan, as much as we can physically do inside of that lens is where he would like to go,”
While Nolan has moved on from superhero stuff and has no intentions of stepping back into it, his work in The Dark Knight trilogy remains the gold standard that many tried to replicate but failed.
The Dark Knight Rises is available to stream on Max.
