Dark Knight premiere shooting - part of Batman curse

21 July, 2012

Death of Heath Leadger, a technician, a recent accident while Anne Hathaway performed her stunt, followed by gruesome Colorado shooting spree might all be separate incidents or all might be a part of the Batman curse. Look at it the way you want to but no one can deny the fact that a lot of singularly intriguing and disturbing incidents have happened around this series.

THE 'CURSE' of the Superman seems to have shifted to Christopher Nolan's 'Batman.' As we remember a long list of actors who were casted as the Super hero Superman, all of them either died or were seriously injured to die eventually. Starting from George Reeves in 1951 the curse followed various other Superman actors such as Bud Collyer, Lee Quigley and Kirk Alyn. What stayed among the actors seems to have moved beyond them with the Batman series - three movies and innumerable incidents marking all of them. The latest incident was the shooting spree in Aurora in Colorado that took 14 lives and 50 other people are grappling with injuries.

Identified as James Holmes, the gunman who sprayed bullets with four different guns was apparently a fan of the Joker, the villain in The Dark Knight. This is not an alienated incident where people have lost their lives. The Joker himself was not spared of the 'curse.' Heath Ledger who played the on screen character (one of his best acting) died in a flat after an overdose of drugs. Many say he gave his life for Batman and indeed his death has an intriguing quality that lends a special aura to the film. That art can transcend from the screen to the actual life was what attracted many. It is famously known that it was his inability to sleep while the making of The Dark Knight Rises that he started taking prescription drugs, which eventually led to his death.

The same film also saw the death of a technician, Wickliffe. He was a special effects technician and he died while he was in a camera truck that was screening a stunt and ran into a tree. However freaky that sounds no one has been able to comprehend why that happened. Morgan Freeman also got a taste of the curse in 2008 when he was in involved in a car accident in Mississippi. He was seriously injured but he somehow survived. Days earlier, while filming for the third and the final movie, “The Dark knight Rises” Anna Hathaway's stunt double was said to have crashed into an expensive camera while filming of the movie. No loss of life was reported but lot of damages took place.

Equipments also faced some of the heat of the 'curse' as while shooting for the current movie in Pittsburgh, the Batwing vehicle was almost destroyed. No actors were hurt but it was the second mishap of the week. Many people would negate this notion of the 'curse' and would call it the sensationalism of a very sad incident. However hard they might try to bring in logic but there are some things that happen around us that have no explanation and in order to have a better understanding, we always put names to it like in the present case we are calling it a 'curse'.