Films are supposed to provide audiences a chance to forget their daily life tensions away for a while and enjoy a story, however, that was something which the late night viewers of The Dark Knight Rises were deprived of, when a gunman started shooting at the audience during the show on July 20, 2012, in Aurora, Colorado. 12 people lost their lives, and 70 were injured, besides making several other moviegoers frightened enough to reconsider watching any film in theaters ever. Not only that, even the Batman, Christian Bale, hasn’t been able to watch the movie without the thoughts of the incident clouding his mind.
“Very sadly, I have not been able to watch that film since because of the whole tragedy of Aurora,” Bale told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I have not been able to sit down and see it without thinking of that. I’d love to be able to, one day.”
Back then, the shooting was the deadliest incident in the US, a dubious distinction it held till the Las Vegas shooting of October last year. The Aurora shooting is considered to be the deadliest such incident in Colorado, overtaking the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
The tragedy became even more frightening when the shooter told authorities that he considered himself to be “The Joker,” and he had bright orange hair, died to imitate the iconic Batman villain.
The Batman trilogy by Christopher Nolan is widely regarded as one of the best superhero movies ever, but, Bale is not in agreement with the notion.
“Mixed emotions about it,” Bale told Variety. “I’m always eternally grateful to [director] Chris [Nolan]. For instance, Rescue Dawn, Werner [Herzog] and I had been trying to put that together for a few years. American Psycho, Mary Harron and I had been trying to put that together for a few years. No one was interested. Why? Me. Suddenly everyone said, ‘Yeah, alright. We’ll go with him.’ It did change everything. It was the first time I had done a film of that magnitude. That was a real learning curve for me. I wrestled with it for a long time. I still do on occasions. But I’m just learning, hey, accept the good things.”
Christian Bale’s latest release Hostiles is currently playing in theaters.
