The Dark Knight Rises

[MacGuffin]

[Sleepless]

Don't tase me, bro.

[MacGuffin]

'Dark Knight Rises' Director Christopher Nolan Reveals New Details About the Plot, Villain Bane
Source: THR

The movie picks up eight years after "The Dark Knight" with Bruce Wayne "not in a great state," says the helmer, who has been notoriously secretive about the final film in his Batman trilogy.

Christopher Nolan has gone overboard to guard the plot details of upcoming Batman threequel, The Dark Knight Rises, including at one point reportedly refusing to let the cast know the ending.

But now he's spilling a few secrets about the movie in a new interview with Empire magazine.

"It's really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne's story," said Nolan, who previously directed 2005's Batman Begins and 2008's The Dark Knight. "We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after The Dark Knight. So he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state."

Warner Bros.' summer 2012 tentpole finds Christian Bale reprising his role of Bruce Wayne/Batman and Gary Oldman back as Commissioner Gordon. But several newcomers also have joined the film, including Tom Hardy as the villain Bane, whom Nolan described as "brutal."

"He's a big dude who's incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style," he said. "It's not about fighting. It's about carnage. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it's nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. He is a terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action."

Nolan said the plan was to give Batman a villain unlike any he's previously encountered.

"With Bane, we're looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn't had before," Nolan said. "With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we're testing Batman both physically as well as mentally."

Meanwhile, costume designer Lindy Hemming revealed a few more details about the villain's backstory as it relates to his mask.

"He was injured early in his story," she told Empire. "He's suffering from pain and needs gas to survive. He can't survive the pain without the mask. The pipes from the mask go back along his jawline and feed into the thing at his back, where there are two cannisters."

Nolan has been notoriously secretive about the movie's plot. In September, Oldman said that he believed he was the only actor who knew details about the final scenes.

"Christopher doesn't want anyone to ruin it and I completely understand that," he told ContactMusic.com. "The newer people on the film go to his office to read the script. They sent mine out, but it had to be hand-delivered directly to me and nobody else. And the final few pages were missing. I went along and talked to Christopher and in person about the ending. Then I locked it away in my head."

The movie -- which also stars franchise newcomers Anne Hathaway as Catwoman along with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard and Josh Pence -- opens July 20. Nolan has said it will be his last Batman film.

[MacGuffin]

Christopher Nolan Debuts 8-Minute 'Dark Knight Rises' Preview
Source: THR

UPDATED: The majority of the footage introduced audiences to Bane, the Batman movie's major villain played by a masked Tom Hardy, and a heist involving a plane.

Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan showed off about eight minutes of footage from The Dark Knight Rises, a preview that will be seen later this month in select IMAX theatres before Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol.
The majority of the preview introduced audiences to Bane, the Batman movie's major villain, played by a masked Tom Hardy. Without giving too much away, the footage revolved around a heist involving a plane.

The sequence was grand in scope, expanding the Batman world outside of Gotham City, and it was filled with a lot of tension and dread. The effect was not only from the images on screen but from the score, which was reminiscent of Nolan's The Dark Knight and Inception.

The crowd, made up mostly of the entertainment press and such executives as DC's Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns, left the screening definitely impressed. Some did point out one pickle, however: the sound. It may be early in the sound mixing process, but a lot of key dialogue, particularly that of Bane, who speaks via a mask, was unintelligible.

When Heat Vision asked Nolan at the post-preview reception about the perceived problem, the director admitted that because of Hardy's accent and because you can't see his lips, there may be problems in hearing the dialogue (though he did say additional sound work would clear some of it up). And he admitted that sometimes in his movies a viewer may not grasp all the lines. 

But he was and is striving for is an overall understanding by the audience and a deeper cinematic experience. To him, the visuals are as important to tell the story as any dialogue. "Otherwise, it's just a radio play," Nolan said.

Nolan introduced the movie praising the IMAX film format, saying it was created the year before he was born but is "the best imaging format ever created." The reason for the preview, which will only appear on about 42 IMAX screens, is to give the movie and Batfans a sense of what the experience of Rises will be in this format. Since only a handful of giant IMAX screens exist, the preview will "give (moviegoers) time to find (them)," Nolan said.

Nolan also said he wanted to bring back a sense of grandeur to movies, which he said was "being chipped away" by various forces. That grandeur was imprinted on him as a child and "I struggle to recapture that," he said.

Prior to the press preview, Nolan had a run-though for another a A-list crowd. Sources say Nolan showed off the footage to fillmakers including Michael Bay, Bryan Singer, Jon Favreau and Eli Roth among others.

[Sleepless]

Sounds good. Let me know when it's on YouTube.

Also: Bane is about to make a reappearance in the Dark Knight comic book - I think in January. Just in case you're interested.

[MacGuffin]

[Reel]

Beautiful

[O.]

if the movie's about his spine getting nastied up, i really have to question the title they chose. i would of gone with something like "The Knight's End" but maybe that won't sell.

[Pozer]

nor sound good.

[Stefen]

if the movie's about his spine getting nastied up, i really have to question the title they chose. i would of gone with something like "The Knight's End" but maybe that won't sell.

I think he obviously gets back up at some point. Walks again. RISES.

Has anyone seen the prologue?

[Pubrick]

I would of gone with something like "The Knight's End" but maybe that won't sell.

I would've gone with something coherent like "would've gone" but maybe that won't smell of shit English.

[O.]

FUCK

[Stefen]

I'm digging Bane's voice.

[RegularKarate]

Samsong mentioned this in the Mission Impossible thread, but the few minutes they showed at the Imax screening were pretty fucking great except that Bane's voice is completely unintelligible.  It sounds cool, but I can't tell what he's saying... I MAYBE understood a third of what he said.

I won't ruin the clip, but despite not fully understanding WHY everything was happening, it was incredible to watch. 

[pete]

dude I saw the trailer, it was awesome...Christian Bale showed his dick.