Following the start of The Dark Knight Rises viral campaign and the release of a new poster this week, it’s fair to say the hype machine for Christopher Nolan’s threequel is in overdrive. The famously tight-lipped director has spoken to the LA Times about his latest movie, speaking in depth about Batman’s latest adversary, Bane.
"I didn't know him very well. David Goyer got me a bunch of stuff on him and we looked into him. I only knew him by name, I wasn't familiar with his back story. He's a very cool character. And getting an actor like Tom to take it on, you know you're going to get something very special. Tom is somebody who really knows how to put character into every gesture, every aspect of his physicality in the way that great actors can... With Bane, the physicality is the thing. With a good villain you need an archetype, you know, you need the extreme of some type of villainy. The Joker is obviously a particular archetype of diabolical, chaotic anarchy and has a devilish sense of humor. Bane, to me, is something we haven't dealt with in the films. We wanted to do something very different in this film. He's a primarily physical villain, he's a classic movie monster in a way — but with a terrific brain. I think he's a fascinating character. I think people are going to get a kick out of what we've done with him."
Nolan recently revealed that The Dark Knight Rises is set 8 years after the end of the last film.
"It will make a lot more sense to people when they see the film," Nolan explains. "But it's not a great mystery — it's the jumping-off point for the film — but it's hard for me to articulate it. I think the mood at the beginning of the film will make a lot of sense. If I had to express it thematically, I think what we're saying is that for Batman and Commissioner Gordon, there's a big sacrifice, a big compromise, at the end of the 'The Dark Knight' and for that to mean something, that sacrifice has to work and Gotham has to get better in a sense. They have to achieve something for the ending of that film — and the feeling at the end of that film — to have validity. Their sacrifice has to have meaning and it takes time to establish that and to show that, and that’s the primary reason we did that. It's a time period that is not so far ahead that we would have to do crazy makeup or anything — which I think would be distracting — but it gave them something to get their teeth into, particularly Christian in terms of [portraying] this guy who has been frozen in this moment in time with nowhere to go. He really has done an incredible job figuring out how to characterize that and express that."
As we saw in Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, Bane is not an easy character to get right on screen. But if anyone can do it, it’s Christopher Nolan. Anticipation is huge for The Dark Knight Rises, and it’s going to be a long wait until the 20th of July next year.
