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When we did Batman Begins, we never thought it would end up as a trilogy.
And maybe to you it's three movies but you have to remember for us it turned into 12
years of our lives.
A lot of stuff happened in that time.
And it all started with Chris Nolan phoning me and asking me if I was able to work with
him and do a Batman movie.
Of course I was able to work with Chris, but the more I thought about it, the more I started
to have concerns that I didn't know how to solve - how could I be so dark and, let's
face it, dramatic and at the same time be the elegant Bruce Wayne, and split my personality
that way?
So Chris came up with the idea that I should invite my friend James Howard who is the infinitely
more elegant and brilliant composer to come aboard and be Bruce Wayne.
So the three of us set off to London, we wrote the movie, had a great time, finished it,
people seemed to like it.
Didn't think much more about it.
And a couple of years later, Chris came over to my studio and started to tell me a different
story.
He started to tell me the story of the Joker, he started to tell me about anarchy, and the
punk attitude, and the fearlessness.
And I said to him, "Who's going to play this character?"
He said, "Oh, this young actor called Heath Ledger."
And let me tell you when Heath came in, every scene we saw, he was fearless.
He truly was that character.
He just got into that role and he was brilliant each time up on the screen with us.
We loved every moment of watching his performance; his daringness.
Right towards the end of finishing the movie, we heard that our Heath had died.
And it was a terrible shock.
And at first I thought, in the sorrow that, everything I was doing, all the punk stuff,
all the hard edges, all the rusty nails, all that stuff, the broken glass attitude - I
needed to tone it all down.
But I realised the only way to really honour the man and honour the performance was to
keep the edge, to keep the rust and razor blades across the rusty strings.
And a while later, Chris came to us and he said we do owe it to ourselves that we finish
this trilogy, and we get back into it, and we get back into the inventiveness of it all,
and we did Dark Knight Rises, and we had an amazing premiere in New York, and we go
to the plane after the premiere, and we go to London for our premiere, and I remember arriving
at my flat at 7 o'clock in the morning and the phone is ringing.
And a journalist, he's asking me what my reaction is to the terrible shooting that occurred
at the screening of our movie, in this small town in Colorado called Aurora.
And I haven't heard of it, we were on the plane when it aired, and of course I said
what everybody else said, I said "devastated."
And all day I was walking around thinking of the victims, thinking of the loved ones
he left behind, and how the word "devastated" was just not enough.
And I phone my friends in the choir that night, and I said, "Can we record a piece of music,
wordless, that feels like we're stretching our arms out across the Atlantic, we're stretching
our arms out all the way to this small town in Colorado called Aurora, and we're hugging
these people, we're hugging the loved ones that are left behind."
And you know something?
The world hasn't gotten much better yet - if you look at Syria, if you look at the Middle
East, you look at Paris, you look at Venezuela where my friend is from.
And on this stage, there are musicians from all nations, from all continents, and when
playing, we play nice together.
And maybe, maybe there's just a little glimmer of something that can be learned.
And tonight, all we want to do is play from our hearts and stretch our arms out and embrace
you, Brisbane, with our music, from our hearts.
Ladies and gentlemen, this piece is called "Aurora."