The Dark Knight is easily considered one of the greatest superhero movies of all time, with a strong cast, storyline, and the legendary Christopher Nolan as its director.
The 2008 film reinvigorated the Batman franchise, earning the cape crusader the title of being the first superhero film to gross over a billion dollars at the box office. Beyond its financial success, however, comes its cultural success, with the film undoubtedly revolutionizing and repopularizing one of the franchise’s most popular characters, the Joker.
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While the Joker had been in several Batman movies and TV shows before The Dark Knight’s release, Heath Ledger’s incredible performance in the Nolan-led film made the character an icon across the world and changed the way people viewed the character over 60 years following its initial creation.
Easily one of the most infamous scenes featuring the Joker in the 2008 film was when he dressed as a nurse, walked away from an exploding hospital before toying with the detonator for a few seconds to make it implode even further.
Recently, a behind-the-scenes shot of this sequence was found and uploaded to Instagram by Goosebumps Cinema, showing how they filmed the practical shot, leading many fans to be impressed by both the directorial choices and the acting skills of Ledger in such a potentially tumultuous scene.
Due to the explosion being completely practical, many commenters were amazed by the fact that Ledger walked away from a building that was legitimately imploding just a few dozen feet behind him.
“I've always wondered how real/deliberate the sense of panic was that Heath displays after the explosions starts up again was,” one commenter pondered, “Did he (the actor) sorta panic and break character to quickly jump into the school bus?”
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“Or did he justify it by thinking, ‘Yes, even the Joker would rush the f*** out of there by that point.’”
Others gave insight into what it was like being near the area where the stunt took place, with one in particular recalling seeing it while driving on the day they filmed it.
“I was caught in traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway when they filmed this scene. I remember seeing the smoke,” the Reddit user recalled, “WGN radio had to tell listeners to not call 911 because they were filming a scene for the new Batman movie.”
Other people who viewed the remarkable behind-the-scenes look at the legendary scene simply found it fascinating, with one commenter adding: “Watching it from a completely different angle on a completely different camera is such a neat perspective!”
Dylan Murray