Earlier this month, we brought you the news about Warner Bros. Pictures‘ plans to present a six-minute prologue for director Christopher Nolan‘s forthcoming bat-film, The Dark Knight Rises prior to early release showings of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in IMAX theaters on December 16th. Shortly thereafter, AMC Theatres confirmed the story and added that the aforementioned prologue will only be played at 70mm IMAX screens and not any digital IMAX locations.
Now, Empire Magazine has unleashed two covers for their latest issue, featuring Christian Bale as Batman and Tom Hardy as the villainous Bane. Within the issue, they have some additional images from the movie, and interviewed director Christopher Nolan and actor Tom Hardy about the film.
via ComingSoon
The director revealed that the prologue “is basically the first six, seven minutes of the film. It’s an introduction to Bane, and a taste of the rest of the film”, and he spoke about just where in his bat-time line The Dark Knight Rises takes place, where Bruce Wayne is and what he’s about to go up against in this installment:
“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.”
Actor Tom Hardy chimed in about the big black bat’s latest nemesis:
“He’s brutal. Brutal. He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style. 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.”
The film’s costume designer Lindy Hemming explained Bane’s mask:
“He was injured early in his story. He’s suffering from pain and he needs gas to survive. He cannot survive the pain without the mask. The pipes from the mask go back along his jaw line and feed into the thing at the back where there are two canisters of what ever it is…the anesthetic.”
In addition to all the details revealed to Empire, actor Gary Oldman recently spoke with MTV about the film. When pressed about whether or not The Dark Knight Rises is truly the finale of Christopher Nolan‘s Bat-Films, Oldman (after some thought) stated. “I will say this: There’s a conclusion. He touches on the first [film] and weaves it in,” he said. “It resolves. I think it’s a trilogy. It’s just great. The story is terrific. It is just epic.“ Check out the video below for more.
The Dark Knight Rises is slated to hit theaters on July 20th, 2012.
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