The Dark Knight Rises—Secrets Revealed!

Director Christopher Nolan and star Tom Hardy drops a few tantalizing clues about the trilogy capper and the villain Batman's going up against

By Josh Grossberg Nov 22, 2011 4:48 PMTags
Christian Bale, Dark Knight Rises SetPhamousFotos / Splash News

It's an excruciatingly long eight-month wait until The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20, but we're one step closer to learning where the final chapter of Christopher Nolan's Batman saga picks up and what's at stake.

This comes courtesy of the filmmaker himself who, along with star Tom Hardy, spoke to the U.K.'s Empire magazine in its upcoming issue about what moviegoers can expect in his exceedingly grim telling of the Bruce Wayne mythos.

Here are the best of TDKR's tantalizing tidbits...

Aby Baker/Getty Images

Bane = Brutal: In the case of TDKR, the baddie that prompts Batman to come back is Bane, played by Hardy, who tells Empire his character will "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," the actor says.

Hardy goes on to explain how Bane differs from the more psychological terror posed by his predecessors—the Joker and Scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul's League of Shadows from Batman Begins.

"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," says Hardy. "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."

What's Up With Bane's Mask? According to costume designer Lindy Hemming, that contraption keeps him alive.

"[Bane] was injured early in his story. He's suffering from pain and needs gas to survive," she tells the magazine. "He can't survive the pain without the mask. The pipes from the mask go back along his jawline and feed into the thing at his back, where there are two canisters."

Bane's Achilles' heel perhaps?