Caffeinated Clint
On the weekend we ran those Batman and Bane covers that make up page 0 of the latest issue of Empire, now we’ve some guts of the “Dark Knight Rises” content to be found within the pages of the UK-based publication.
Christopher Nolan sat down with the magazine and revealed several new details about his final Batman film.
The movie is set 8 years later : Nolan says, “It’s really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne’s story. 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.”
Why is it set 8 years later? : From what I hear, it was a studio/Nolan compromise. Nolan does something to, er, the character in this final part of his trilogy that obviously didn’t sit so well with some of the brass at Warner Bros. A meet-in-the-middle was reached where Nolan would leap forward in time, thus enabling Warner Bros to make as many movies or a TV show as they wanted about what and who Batman faced between “Dark Knight” and “Dark Knight Rises”. Needless to say, Nolan likely won’t be involved in these further Batman movies, nor will star Christian Bale, but the studio is still keen to keep the character in the Nolan Batverse since this incarnation has been the best received of the Caped Crusader series.
Batman will get a beating : Without saying too much, Nolan suggests that Bane will really test Batman. “With Bane, we’re looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn’t had before. With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we’re testing Batman both physically as well as mentally.”
Bane’s fighting technique : “He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style,” Tom Hardy says. “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.”
Bane’s look : Costume designer Lindy Hemming explained how Bane looks and functions. “He was injured early in his story,” she said. “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.”
