Amid the widespread excitement over last month’s double reveal of both trailer and prologue for The Dark Knight Rises , one small niggle was repeatedly mentioned by fans and critics alike: it was kind of difficult to make out what Bane was saying.
We recently reported that Nolan had no plans to tinker with Bane’s dialogue, with one Warner Brothers exec claiming, “Chris wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn’t dumb things down.”
However, Collider is now reporting that Nolan has performed something of an about-turn on this front, sending out a new audio mix to IMAX theatres which reportedly makes Tom Hardy’s delivery a lot easier to understand.
Instead of asking Hardy to re-record his lines, Nolan has instead tinkered with the background noise involved in some of his key scenes, most noticeably in the plane sequence which had previously made him sound nigh-on incomprehensible.
We must admit, we’re relieved by this latest development. Whilst the mask looks brilliant, and Bane’s strangulated tones are pleasingly unsettling, those positives would be redundant if the audience can’t work out head or tail of what he’s saying!
A triumph for common sense then, and one that should iron out any last lingering doubts ahead of the film's UK release on 20 July 2012. Now go and watch that trailer again!
