Bane of Our Existence
We've seen the first six minutes of 'The Dark Knight Rises'!
On Thursday evening, a select group of journalists and Warner Bros. Pictures executives were ushered into the Universal City IMAX theater in Los Angeles for a special showing of the first six minutes of director Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises." Just like "The Dark Knight," for which the prologue was attached to IMAX prints of "I Am Legend" four years ago, this will be attached to around 42 IMAX 70mm prints of "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" when it opens on Dec. 16.
Nolan himself was on hand to provide a brief introduction, in which he joked that he had just started editing the film so "don't ask me how it ends" (like he would tell). But he spent most of his brief time extolling the virtues of shooting in IMAX, which will be used for approximately 50 minutes of "The Dark Knight Rises." He said it provided an "immersive" experience that recaptured the "grandeur" of going to the movies, something he feels is being "chipped away."
That's a discussion for another day, but there's no question that Nolan is using IMAX to its fullest potential. After a short non-IMAX opening in which we saw Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) eulogizing the late Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) -- a direct link to the end of "The Dark Knight" -- the full IMAX screen opened up and we got into the meat of the segment. Full disclosure: The studio has asked everyone in attendance to not give away the minute-by-minute details of the sequence, but we can certainly provide some impressions.
Our first impression: huge. The scene involves planes, hostages and a daring kidnapping (all linked, by the way, to the viral marketing campaign that began this week), and it's done on a scale that you won't believe -- and that looks even more incredible and dizzying in the IMAX format. Basically, the CIA is acquiring a missing nuclear physicist named Dr. Pavel (Alon Abutbul) from the members of a militia. But as they board their plane to take the doctor away, Bane (Tom Hardy) quickly reveals that he has other plans.
Bane: From the first shot of Tom Hardy (similar to the shot that revealed Heath Ledger's hideous Joker grin four years ago), shaved bald and with a spider-like breathing mask clamped on his face, you can tell that Nolan has found a villain worthy enough to follow the Clown Prince of Crime. Before you even see Bane, an aura of mystery and menace is established around the man -- an aura that rapidly turns to dread and terror once Bane reveals himself.
We got a chance to speak with Nolan after the screening, and he laid out his rationale for selecting Bane as Batman's chief adversary: "I tasked David Goyer (co-writer on the story) early on, when we knew the shape of our story, with looking for a worthy antagonist. We examined really all the possibilities, and what we were looking for was an archetype. What we were looking for was a character that embodied a threat that we hadn't dealt with before, that Batman hadn't dealt with before in our films.
"Bane is primarily a physical presence," Nolan continued. "He's threatening in a monstrous way and very frightening in a physical way, and that's why we went for him. We didn't want to do any kind of watered down version of the Joker, which a lot of those characters are, and we really found something in him. He's got incredible intelligence as well and a really fascinating backstory that we were able to draw elements from into our story. I'm very excited for the world to see what Tom Hardy has done with this, because he's created this unbelievably unique character."
But back to the footage: Once Bane is introduced, the situation rapidly escalates. His voice, by the way, is eerie and mechanized, but nearly everyone at the screening noted that it was difficult to make out all his lines through the mask (Nolan addressed the issue with The Hollywood Reporter), an issue we hope can be rectified. Nevertheless, this man is bad, bad, bad -- and the loyalty of his followers is even more frightening. The stunts and action beats in the sequence are stunning: Think James Bond filtered through the lens of "Inception."
The sequence ends with another visual tip to "The Dark Knight" and then we get a quick montage of other scenes from the movie, including our first looks at Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) and Gotham City police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), plus some seriously epic confrontations on the streets of Gotham. The final shot is a chilling one -- and it promises that "The Dark Knight Rises" may actually descend into some dark places.
A whole new trailer, comprising almost entirely different footage, will show up in front of "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" next week as well, so prepare for an onslaught of Bat-mania as the countdown to July 20, 2012, begins. And check back here in a few days for more on "The Dark Knight Rises" and our exclusive interview with Christopher Nolan!