Christian Bale says he hasn't seen Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, the last installment in the filmmaker's Batman trilogy, since 2012's Aurora shooting. The actor became a global star by playing Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, in Batman Begins in 2005, the first live-action Batman-related movie to hit theaters since Joel Schumacher's much-maligned Batman & Robin in 1997. The film earned overwhelming critical praise, became a commercial success, and a spawned a sequel three years later.

Nolan's The Dark Knight is widely heralded as the greatest superhero movie of all-time, with many people praising Nolan's direction as well as Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. The film was the first movie ever to be shot using IMAX cameras, which contributed to it becoming the first superhero movie to pass $500 million domestically as well as the billion-dollar mark globally. Bale played the Caped Crusader one last time in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, and the role has now been passed onto Ben Affleck. Bale recently mentioned that he hasn't seen Affleck's DCEU Batman yet, despite wanting to see how his successor has fared over the past two years. What's interesting, though, is that he hasn't seen his final go as Batman since 2012 either.

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In an interview on MTV's Happy Sad Confused podcast, Christian Bale mentioned that not only has he not seen Affleck's Batman yet, but he hasn't even seen The Dark Knight Rises since 2012's Aurora shooting. He said: "Very sadly, I have not been able to watch that film since because of the whole tragedy of Aurora. I have not been able to sit down and see it without thinking of that. I'd love to be able to, one day."

Christian Bale as Batman and Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises

For those that don't know, on July 20, 2012, a gunman, wearing a gas mask that some reporters attributed to him attempting to look like Tom Hardy's Bane, opened fire inside an auditorium at a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, CO, during a midnight screening of Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. The gunman, James Eagan Holmes, killed 12 people and injured 70 others. It was the deadliest mass shooting in the state of Colorado since 1999's Columbine massacre, and it's currently the 17th deadliest mass shooting in United States' history. The massacre prompted an increase in security at movie theaters across the country, and it led to Warner Bros. tasking Ruben Fleischer with cutting the theater shootout scene from his film, Gangster Squad, which resulted in the movie being delayed to 2013.

Considering that the shooting took place on opening night of Bale's final Batman film, it's understandable that he would think of the shooting whenever he tries to watch The Dark Knight Rises and, therefore, would be reluctant to watch the film at all.

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Source: Happy Sad Confused

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