Christopher Nolan Talks About Changes He Made To 'The Dark Knight' To Keep Its PG-13 Rating

Interview with Christopher Nolan

Transcript

00:00How did you decide, okay, we're going to go R on this one?

00:03What, what, what, what the decision came to that?

00:05I mean, the decision, I suppose the key thing to answer

00:09in that question is that the decision was made

00:11at script stage.

00:12Interesting.

00:13And when we approached Universal about making the film,

00:17it was very clear.

00:18We said, okay, it's going to be an R-rated film.

00:22Very often with different genres, you know,

00:24when we were making the Dark Knight, for example.

00:26Which feels like an R-rated movie.

00:28It does.

00:29And, you know, there was a certain amount of negotiation

00:33and editing that had to happen to secure the PG-13 rating,

00:36as is often the case with films that are edgy PG-13 films.

00:42And that's an area that I've been working in for years.

00:46But those are films that you go into with the studio

00:48knowing full well that that's the rating you're aiming for.

00:51You're aiming for that, that audience,

00:52that breadth of audience.

00:54And so you have to change things to make it work.

00:58And you have to get clever about how you do things

01:00and, you know, how you present violence in the action scenes.

01:04Like the pencil, you just like see it.

01:07Yeah, yeah.

01:07Yeah, exactly.

01:09Things by implication, not red blood squibs,

01:12just gray dust squibs, things like that.

01:14There are all kinds of things that you're doing all along.