Published December 16, 2011 by Devin Faraci
Up For Discussion: The Prologue To THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Have you seen the IMAX footage from THE DARK KNIGHT RISES? Talk about Bane's locution here.
I have not seen the IMAX footage from The Dark Knight Rises that is playing in front of Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol right now; I was out of town when it was screened for LA critics. I have heard some of the audio, though, which means I understand why there is a large group of people saying that Bane's dialogue is pretty much incomprehensible. There was some leaked audio from back when TDKR was shooting at a football stadium in Pittsburgh, and Tom Hardy's choice when it came to Bane's accent was... interesting; many people assumed that wasn't how the character would actually sound. Turns out it exactly is.

There are people who seem to think that what's playing on IMAX screens this weekend is somehow unfinished, that Nolan hasn't mixed the audio or something. That isn't the case, and Nolan has said so in print a couple of times now - this is what Bane's going to sound like, and it's going to be hard for people to understand him. Again, a fascinating and really bold choice.

Did you see the footage (in theaters)? What did you think of what you saw? Most importantly: what did you think of what you heard?

Yes, people won't go see it because of his voice. Totally logical.

That bootleg isn't much to work with. But based on what I saw, this will not surpass TDK. Bane seems to be surprisingly boring and even harder to understand than Batman. Casting Tom Hardy as a villain was a brilliant move, but I feel like his talent is being put to waste if he's wearing a mask that warps his voice into something unrecognizable. It appears that Bane is a creatively bankrupt character. Hardy has nothing to work with. A far cry from Charlie Bronson. I think a lot of us were hoping for some of that psychotic aura to carry over into TDKR; I know I was. But, what can you do when you're wearing a mask that render's your personality completely void?

http://www.slashfilm.com/expect-christopher-nolan-change-audio-the-dark-knight-rises/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+slashfilm+%28%2FFilm%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Looks like the voice will stay. SUCK IT!

http://www.slashfilm.com/expect-christopher-nolan-change-audio-the-dark-knight-rises/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+slashfilm+%28%2FFilm%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Looks like the voice will stay. SUCK IT!

Published December 20, 2011 by Devin Faraci

Christopher Nolan Likes Bane’s Voice just The Way It Is


BANEGATE EXPLODES IN AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE ROAR!




Yesterday the internets were ablaze with a battle between people who had a hard time hearing Bane's dialogue in the Dark Knight Rises prologue and trailer and the hyperzealous Batjihadists who wanted to burn them alive to make them repent for daring speak out in any way against any creative decisions made by Our Holy Lord Christopher Nolan, Sexless Aesthete Of The British Order Of Wonky Directors. And then there were some reasonable people who were like 'Well, he'll probably tweak the sound before the movie comes out.'

Turns out it's another bad day to be a reasonable person: Christopher Nolan will not tweak the sound! Not very much, anyway. Says The Hollywood Reporter:


Sources close to the movie say Warner Bros. is very aware of the sound issue. One source working on the film says he is “scared to death” about “the Bane problem.” And with good reason. The last Batman film, 2008’s The Dark Knight, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, and the studio doesn’t want anything to tamper with Rise’s chances for success.

Sources also say some at Warners would like Nolan to change the sound mix, but the filmmaker, whose autonomy is well-earned (his Inception earned the studio more than $800 million and eight Oscar nominations), has informed executives that he plans only to alter the sound slightly, not to rework it completely.

“Chris wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn't dumb things down," says one high-level exec, declining to be named. “You've got to pedal faster to keep up.”

So here's where it gets interesting, and worthy of coverage here: does it matter? Is comprehensibility really that big a deal in a modern action movie?

Here's my answer: unless incomprehensibility is part of the point (ie, everybody in the movie keeps saying "WTF did Bane just say?'), character dialogue should be basically understandable. And easily understandable, when allowing for differences in audience hearing ability and theatrical presentation (ie #2, not every theater will have great sound). When Robert Altman made movies with sound mixes filled with overlapping, hard to follow dialogue, that was part of the point. He wanted watching these movies to be like walking down the street and picking up snippets of conversation. It wasn't that Altman didn't know how to mix sound or didn't care - he actually WANTED it to be that way, and had made a very specific aesthetic choice for it.

It's possible that Nolan is making an aesthetic choice here - no one has seen the film to really judge that. Perhaps Bane's dialogue is jumbled because his message is confused. Or it reflects the inner state of a character pumped up on Venom. But I suspect that it's just one of those Nolan 'realistic' tics, where he thinks a guy with a mask over his mouth would be pretty hard to make out.

There's one other question that is raised by this: how much does the filmmaker owe the audience? Should we expect to be able to understand everything that's being said in a film? Looking at Nolan's previous work the question extends to 'Should we be able to make out every action in a fight scene?' I think a guy like Nolan, who is coming off two huge hits, should be able to make his own version of a blockbuster - but should that blockbuster still be at least semi-approachable by the audience?

I ask again... WHAT IS BADASSDIGEST.COM?

I have literally NEVER heard of it in my life. EVER.

So... your backups for your argument are:

1. A castoff from CHUD!!! has a site that is a rip off of SlashFilm and barely has any news at all.
2. CinemaBums.com?! WHAT? THE? HELL? Another site that 10? people have heard of in the world... judging by the TWO!!!!! "likes" that "comic" got you posted.

You're REALLY reaching.

Harrigan said it could be the year's most successful film among all studios. Buzz for the first movie has been building for years.

Audiences, he added, have been introduced to major characters in "Avengers" via "Iron Man" and "Captain America: The First Avenger," and lesser-known characters such as Nick Fury and Hawkeye via cameos in "Captain America" and "Thor."

"We're expecting it will be an absolute phenomenon," Hollis said. "I don't know who doesn't know about 'The Avengers' at this point."