Bane said what?

Maybe if he took that thing off his mouth ...

First, a confession. As any friend will tell you, I am hard of hearing, especially on my right side. As a result, I sometimes watch DVDs at home with the closed captioning turned on. That's part of the reason that the latest news about "The Dark Knight Rises" caught my ear (sorry).

I found the voice of the villain Bane, portrayed by Tom Hardy, difficult to understand in the early clips of the movie. At first, I thought it might just be me. Then I read other people saying the same thing.

Multiple Internet sources - Adam Chitwood of collider.com posted the "exclusive" - are reporting that negative feedback about the sound caused Warner Bros. to distribute a remix of the film's prologue that is being shown in IMAX theaters:

“A friend of mine who is an IMAX projectionist told me they received a new soundtrack for the Dark Knight Rises prologue. He said it’s now a combo soundtrack with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, but the cool thing about this is that they’ve cleaned up the dialogue. They’ve gone in and lowered the background noise of the plane and other things, thus making Bane’s dialogue clearer and more understandable. He asked some people after they left the movie if they could understand Bane and they all said they had no issue understanding him, and were excited for the movie.”

Collider also published a copy of a letter being sent to IMAX theaters about the fix.

Seems simple enough. After all, who in their right mind would not want to clean up the dialogue so that viewers can understand what one of the main characters is saying?

Director Christopher Nolan, for one, is not crazy about the idea. He reportedly was opposed to reworking Bane's voice, although not against adjusting other sound in the mix.

Then, shortly after the Collider story appeared, the site was contacted by the studio:

Warner Bros as contacted me and said that our story is absolutely not true.

Maybe I will just wait for the DVD and watch the closed captioning. Well, I would if I had any willpower.

'The Dark Knight Rises' prologue - SPOILERS!

What did you say?

We're not taking credit for any of this. Not a single word. All of the we're-not-worthy kudos go to Janice Kay of ScienceFiction.com, who cleverly pieced together the following description of the upcoming trailer for "The Dark Knight Rises." The title of World's Greatest Detective is taken, but Kay deserves special recognition for her work on this.

One more time - SPOILERS ahead. Do not clock on "read more" unless you want to, you know, read more.

Director Christopher Nolan discusses the finale in his Batman trilogy

Third time's the harm?

Christopher Nolan opening up about "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises"?

Hard to believe, isn't it? And while the secretive director is not giving away too many details, he is finally talking about his much-anticipated third - and final - installment in the series. As he told Empire Magazine:

"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.

"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."

Batman, Bane occupy Wall Street

Bane and Batman.

Yes, we're being treated to even more photographs and video from the set of "The Dark Knight Rises." What makes the photos exceptional is that they are close-up shots from fight scenes filmed on Wall Street in New York City involving Bane (Tom Hardy) and Batman (Christian Bale). You can see more pictures and video by clicking here.

What makes the video fun to watch is the fake fighting. Literally, some of the punches don't come within three feet of their target.



For the real thing, we have to wait until June 12, 2012.

More Clues to 'The Dark Knight Rises' Plot (Hint: Think 'Knightfall'

If you've been paying any attention at all to the little bat-bits of news coming from the secretive sets of Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises," you probably already know too much about the film and its possible plot.

Why?

Bane.

The criminal mastermind, portrayed by Tom Hardy, is billed as the top villain in the movie. That immediately reminds comic book fans of the "Knightfall" storyline from 1993. We'll let the fine folks at Screen Rant provide the synopsis.

But first, a warning: If you only know Bane from his lame appearance in Joel Schumacher's even lamer "Batman and Robin," this likely contains MAJOR SPOILERS:

Footage of Batman fighting Bane ... after they just stand around for a while

Lights ... cameras ... action!

It takes a few seconds for the scene to get rolling, but you can watch Christian Bale's Batman and Tom Hardy's Bane mix it up in this video from the streets of Pittsburgh, er, Gotham City.

"Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" will be coming to a theater near you next summer.

First Pic of Tom Hardy as Bane in Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

I came across this bit of news at Newsarama.  I guess there was a Twitter game or something that led to the above picture.  From the looks of it Bane looks different than he does in the comics and that isn't a bad thing.
http://blog.newsarama.com/2011/05/20/first-bane-picture-from-the-dark-knight-rises-released/