One ‘The Dark Knight’ Scene Was So Dangerous to Film It Could’ve Easily Killed the Stuntman and Ruined Christopher Nolan’s Entire Career
- The Dark Knight remains one of the best superhero movies to date, thanks to everyone involved.
- The pencil trick scene in the movie was a sleight of hand that could have gone sideways if not done quickly.
- Using CGI was not really an option because the movie was shot on IMAX cameras.
There are few superhero movies as good as Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. On one hand, the eponymous second movie of this film series had Christian Bale starring as the most realistic superhero the franchise has ever seen. On the other hand, Heath Ledger appeared as the antagonist Joker.
Ledger’s version of Joker is one of the best screen adaptations of the character. From clever dialogues to cruel murders, he had it all. One of these murders was almost so dangerous that the stuntman involved could have actually lost his life on the set if he was not being careful enough. Luckily, he escaped any such mishap and fans got the chance to find out what went down.
A Stuntman Could Have Lost His Life While Filming This Scene in The Dark Knight
Even after more than a decade following the film’s release, fans jump up at the name of The Dark Knight. The mastery is such that every scene of the movie has been dissected over the years to learn how it actually happened. The pencil trick the Clown Prince of Crime performed in one of the scenes.
Joker crashes a meeting amongst some of the biggest mob leaders of Gotham and casually asks them if they would like to see a magic trick where a pencil disappears. The pencil is planted on the table tip first and the supervillain rams the head of the guy, who tries to attack him, on the same spot with the pencil piercing his eye and passing through his brain. The pencil sure did disappear.
The action kills the henchman, portrayed by stuntman Charles Jarman, instantly. However, the backstory behind the scene proves that it would have been very fatal if it was not for Jarman’s sleight of hand. Recalling the scene in an interview with Vulture, he said:
I remember Christopher Nolan saying to me, ‘Look, we’re going to do a couple of shots where you need to be able to take that pencil away.‘
We did a couple of half-speed rehearsals just to get the hand action of my right hand sweeping across, taking the pencil as my body was going down, and my head striking the blank surface. It was a little hairy, because the pencil’s stuck in the table.
Luckily, Jarman understood the assignment. He even joked that if it was not for him being fast enough with his hand, the only way of learning about his experience would be through an Ouija board.
Why Did They Take the Risk of Shooting the Scene in Real Time Instead of Using CGI?
Many might wonder why go through such a dangerous experiment in real life when there is CGI. It is no secret that Christopher Nolan is not a fan of CGI. Even so, he was willing to use CGI here. The only problem is that he is also a fan of IMAX cameras, which struck out the possibility of using CGI to do the scene convincingly.
In the same interview with Vulture, the film’s visual effects supervisor Nick Davis elaborated on the issue with using CGI for the pencil trick scene.
But we shot it in IMAX, so you see it on a giant, great, big canvas. Wherever possible, we tried not to do unnecessary visual effects shots because, digitally, you can never really re-create an IMAX image.
So, IMAX cameras has drawbacks in addition to the wonderful things that it is capable of doing. Luckily, no one was hurt in the making of the scene, and it remains one of the most terrifying scenes in the movie.
The Dark Knight is available for streaming on Max.
