Empire gets scoop on Bane, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Tom Hardy as Bane (via: FirstShowing) Empire has released photos of Tom Hardy as Bane from The Dark Knight Rises and Christopher Nolan offers up more details on the eagerly anticipated sequel, due out next Summer. Rises picks up eight years after The Dark Knight (2008), with Bruce Wayne still reeling from the death of Harvey Dent. Empire‘s [...]

Tom Hardy as Bane (via: FirstShowing)

Empire has released photos of Tom Hardy as Bane from The Dark Knight Rises and Christopher Nolan offers up more details on the eagerly anticipated sequel, due out next Summer.

Rises picks up eight years after The Dark Knight (2008), with Bruce Wayne still reeling from the death of Harvey Dent. Empire‘s real scoop though is on Bane, Nolan’s choice of villain for this, his third in the series.

Nolan: “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.” (via: FirstShowing)

Tom Hardy (Warrior, Inception) also offered a few choice details on the fighting style of the Dark Knight’s new 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.” (via: FirstShowing)

I’m not usually one for gratuitous violence but…I really want to see this movie!

Rises already promises to be far grittier than Nolan’s last two installments but I trust the director as a storyteller, especially when it comes to this franchise.

I like but do not love Inception. Same goes for The Prestige and even (hold the hate mail) Memento. But Nolan hit on something with this superhero franchise, of all things. He found a way to make these generations-old characters seem new and interesting again by wrapping them in the issues and politics of the day.

Instead of obsessing over the psyche and motivations of his heros and villains, as many of his predecessors have (with both pen and lens), he cloaked them in a Gotham new yet familiar. One that resembles the flawed communities to which his audiences belong. One that he could use, with little effort, to ground a more demented Joker and a less empathetic Bruce Wayne. That was a stroke of genius for a director dealing with a cast of characters this timeworn.

I don’t relish the “snapping (of) heads” or the ripping of “spinal columns” but I’m eager to see where Nolan takes our Knight next. It might be darker than we expect, it might not, but I know he’ll keep it interesting.

Read more on: Empire | FirstShowing | SlashFilm | MTV News | HitFlix