Batman 3 Dark Knight Rises: Bane is all Good For Nolan

The trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is all kinds of awesome, but many people that saw the extended prologue before Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol had problems with how Bane sounded. However, the masked menace might not sound very different when TDKR hits the big screen.

I didn’t see the six-minute prologue and Bane only speaks one line in the trailer that was recently unveiled but I have to admit that Bane isn’t the easiest guy to understand. Towards the end of the trailer, Bane tells an apparently defeated Bruce Wayne, “When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die,” and it took me a couple of times to get the first part of that statement, although I did understand the “you have my permission to die” part the first time around.

Warner Bros is concerned that having a villain that can’t be understood could cause problems for what otherwise appears to be a film set to rule the box office, with one source saying he’s “scared to death” about “the Bane problem,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. With that fear in mind, some people at the studio would like director Christopher Nolan to change the sound mix, but Nolan is used to having his way when helming movies and he has said that he only plans to alter the sound slightly instead of reworking it completely. While this could be a cause for alarm if anyone else was determined to stick to their guns, Nolan has earned his autonomy with more than a few blockbusters on his resume so a little tweaking might be all that’s needed. Also, while Bane does sound a bit on the unintelligible side, he also sounds very menacing, and that’s a quality you don’t want to lose with too many alterations.

What do you think about Bane’s voice? Is some extensive work needed before The Dark Knight Rises arrives in theaters or does Nolan have the right idea with just doing a little re-working?