Chapter 610: An Alternative Ending

"You haven't read the script for The Dark Knight?"

Scarlett Johansson shook her head at Tina Fey's question. "I've been busy preparing for Captain America lately, so I haven't looked at it yet."

"I read it a few days ago." Tina Fey glanced back toward Duke. "It really left an impression. This has to be Duke's deepest script since Saving Private Ryan."

Before Scarlett could reply, she continued, "Unlike past superhero movies, even Batman Begins, this is more like a crime thriller grounded in reality."

Scarlett looked intrigued.

"Put it this way," Tina Fey went on. "If the real world actually had a superhero like Bruce Wayne, whose abilities far exceed those of ordinary people, what force could possibly keep him in check?"

"Themselves?" Scarlett asked hesitantly.

"You could say that," Tina Fey nodded. "In other words, the only thing keeping them in check is their own moral code. If a person is bound only by morality and acts solely according to his own principles, it's actually a very dangerous thing."

Scarlett immediately understood. "So if he breaks his own rules, the harm he causes might be even greater than the crimes he fights?"

"Exactly." Tina Fey crossed her arms, looking over at Nicolas Cage, who had just finished his makeup. "When Harvey Dent turns into Two-Face, the consequences are incredibly severe."

Scarlett looked over as well, though she muttered about something completely unrelated. "Since when did Duke get interested in such complicated films?"

In her impression, the movies Duke produced—including The Lord of the Rings Trilogy—had always been relatively straightforward. The only film that had tried to explore deeper issues, in her eyes, was Daylight, and even then it only briefly touched upon anything profound, leading critics to pan it as a "movie glorifying the Los Angeles Police."

Without a doubt, The Dark Knight held deep realistic significance. Fans had once extracted countless meanings from it, finding different ways to interpret every single line of dialogue. Duke couldn't remember all those details, but the dialogue he had designed still touched on themes of chaos, law, and moral codes.

A smart director wouldn't easily dictate definitions, preferring to leave them for the audience to judge. Compared to past superhero movies, the themes and plot of The Dark Knight were undeniably far more complex, yet they weren't overly convoluted. The reasoning was simple: ninety percent of people in this world would never consider a movie they couldn't understand to be a good one.

Just as he had reminded Zack Snyder regarding Watchmen, The Dark Knight was first and foremost a commercial blockbuster; everything else was secondary.

The film would be dark, but not pitch-black. A completely pitch-black movie would be unacceptable to audiences and would draw rabid attacks from the mainstream media.

Christopher Nolan had been a maverick in the past, but even he had to compromise in this regard. The most typical example was the scene involving the two ferries and the choices made by the passengers. Given the tone of the entire film, it seemed as though the ferries really should have exploded.

However, they ultimately didn't. This outcome undoubtedly brought the audience hope...

Just imagine if the ferries actually had blown up. How would the media, viewing itself as the guardian of societal morality, have judged the film?

After all, this wasn't an arthouse film meant only for a narrow audience; it was a Batman movie with countless fans.

There was also the choice of having a Black man throw away the detonator...

To put it bluntly, Christopher Nolan was essentially still a mainstream director. Duke, of course, would make the exact same choice—the person to throw away the detonator definitely would be, and absolutely had to be, a Black man.

It wasn't just that; there were also the scenes involving children.

Inside the pitch-black soundstage, Nicolas Cage's Harvey Dent flipped his coin for the final time in his life, getting heads to "judge" Gordon's son.

Right as Cage tossed the coin into the air and waited for the result, a stunt double dressed as Batman rushed over and tackled him. The two tumbled toward the edge of the building, which was dressed as an explosion site, and fell over the side.

Naturally, both men landed safely on the mats below.

After Duke yelled cut and approved the take, the crew transitioned to shoot the subsequent scene. Suspended in the air, the stuntman held Gordon's son in his left arm and gripped a wooden board with his right, using all his strength to hand the boy up to Gordon before dropping onto the green mats below.

The scenes for the film's ending took only half an afternoon to finish shooting, but Duke didn't announce that it was a wrap. Instead, he filmed an alternative ending.

This ending was a bit too sensitive, and Duke hadn't yet decided if he would include it in a future DVD release.

The ending definitely required a change, and it was equally dark. In this version, Harvey Dent shot Batman, leaving him powerless to fight back. Dent then completed his judgment of Gordon's son, but the coin landed on its clean face...

Next, he judged Gordon. Gordon also passed the trial. Two-Face then departed, though his final words promised he would return; he wouldn't easily let off the killers who had indirectly caused Rachel's death.

Yes, in this ending, Two-Face survived, and the Joker utterly won the battle for Gotham City's soul.

However, after filming finished, Duke temporarily shelved this footage. There was a ninety-nine percent chance an ending like this wouldn't sit well with audiences.

Actually, in the ending they were going to use, Harvey Dent still completed his trial of Gordon's son. Duke specifically had John Schwartzman shoot a close-up of Batman's hand; the coin he caught landed with its clean side facing up.

Placed in the film, this aligned far better with audience expectations than the alternative ending Duke had shot. It also offered more food for thought for those who liked to ponder deeply: Batman didn't dare gamble on the outcome of the coin toss this time, because he believed that flipping a coin was completely senseless.

If deciding life and death by flipping a coin truly followed some unseen cosmic logic, then an innocent child absolutely deserved to get heads. Looked at this way, Batman rescuing the boy was entirely "unnecessary," and this "unnecessary" action had killed Dent, who "wouldn't have shot the child because it was heads."

Of course, all of this was hypothetical. Duke hadn't filmed any footage to explicitly show this; it was merely his own musing. If Batman hadn't tackled Dent this time, the child would have been safe anyway, but who would dare gamble that it would definitely land on heads?

Perhaps the fact that it landed on heads could also show that Harvey Dent "should not" have been killed during this coin toss, because he wouldn't have murdered the child anyway.

As for the next "judgment" targeting Gordon, given the progression of the plot, it wasn't hard to predict that Gordon would definitely get tails. Therefore, if Batman had waited to intervene and save Gordon on the thirteenth coin toss, it obviously would have been much more necessary.

But neither Duke nor Christopher Nolan had directed it that way. The main reason was that in a standard American film like Batman, it was simply impossible not to save the child.

Furthermore, if Gordon had been judged by the coin with a definitive outcome, it would have destroyed the philosophical ambiguity left for thoughtful viewers regarding his character. Gordon represented the pragmatic side of Gotham. He knew there was no perfection, that people couldn't be entirely pure, and that good and evil were sometimes impossible to clearly separate. He was willing to use evil means to solve evil problems, so long as the problem was resolved.

So, whether being pragmatic or accepting reality was ultimately good or bad wasn't something Duke could decide as a director. Leaving it to the audience to ponder was far more interesting than letting a coin decide, wasn't it?

Filming in the Los Angeles area mostly alternated between Warner Studios and the Hughes Aircraft Plant. The larger sets, like the climax and the final one-on-one showdown between the Joker and Batman, were all housed inside the hangars at the Hughes Aircraft Plant.

The crew's operations ran quite smoothly. Even Nicolas Cage, whose condition often fluctuated, took only a few days to get back to normal when he hit a slump.

As time slowly approached Christmas, Duke took a trip to London to check on the filming of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. With Robin Grande and Joanne Rowling, the original author, keeping an eye on things over there, it was a reassuring setup.

After Alfonso Cuaron's transitional stint, Harry Potter Studio ultimately adopted Joanne Rowling's suggestion and chose the British director David Yates to take the helm of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

It was now the end of 2006, and those kids from the beginning were gradually growing up. A significant number of them were like typical Hollywood child stars, beginning to lose their looks as they aged.

Even among the few who hadn't, their acting skills basically hadn't improved at all. In cases like Emma Watson, there was even a trend of her acting getting progressively worse.

However, whether their acting was good or bad didn't have a huge impact. In the hearts of the audience, no matter how Emma Watson performed, she was Hermione Granger.

The same logic applied to the other main actors.

The result of this was that the parents and agents of these young stars made exorbitant demands to the crew time and time again. Before almost every film in the series began shooting, Robin Grande had to expend considerable energy to settle the young actors' salaries.

Looking at it from the young actors' perspectives, this was compensation they naturally had every right to fight for. But standing in the shoes of investors like Duke, this was undeniably taking a slice of their cake.

Fortunately, Robin Grande firmly remembered Duke's earlier instructions. Even though the salaries for the Gryffindor Golden Triangle had risen to the tens of millions of dollars, the studio never once budged on the issue of profit-sharing.

However, this situation couldn't last much longer. The young actors' agents, for instance, had already banded together, planning to demand a massive percentage of the profits when it came time for the series finale.

As the grand finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be produced and released in two parts, but it needed to be filmed all at once.

Without a doubt, the conclusion of the series would inevitably ignite the enthusiasm of fans, and the agents knew exactly how to maximize their profits.

But Duke had also made his preparations.

Upon returning to Los Angeles from London, Duke received a piece of good news. The crew had found an abandoned hospital slated for demolition in Vermont, which could be used to shoot the practical explosion scenes.