Christopher Nolan cites ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ as inspiration
![At a recent press conference for The Dark Knight Rises, ComingSoon.Net asked Christopher Nolan about what many have speculated were direct or indirect allusions in the film to Charles Dickens’ literary masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities. Nolan was surprisingly forthright about the connection: “When Jonah showed me his first draft of his screenplay, it […]](http://darkknight.tribute.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/dark-knight-rises09-580x435-300x225.jpg "Christopher Nolan cites ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ as inspiration - The Dark Knight")
At a recent press conference for The Dark Knight Rises, ComingSoon.Net asked Christopher Nolan about what many have speculated were direct or indirect allusions in the film to Charles Dickens’ literary masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities. Nolan was surprisingly forthright about the connection: “When Jonah showed me his first draft of his screenplay, it was 400 pages long,” says the director. “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.” Nolan also explains that the thematic parallel between the two narratives was something that he wanted to capture for the conclusion to his saga. “What Dickens does in that book,” he explains, “in terms of having all his characters come together in one unified story with all these thematic elements and all this great emotionalism and drama, it was exactly the tone we were looking for.” The Dark Knight Rises closes Nolan’s Batman trilogy on July 20th.
