Nolan Compares Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises to Marlon Brando
There's no secret that Tom Hardy's a great actor, but comparing him to Brando is new. Still, that's exactly what director Nolan thinks about his Bane's performance.
In The Dark Knight Rises, Christian Bale 's Batman had a new enemy to face: Bane, the man born in the darkness (and filled with socialist ideas).
For his movie, Christopher Nolan made significant changes to the comic version of this character and made him far more complex than the humanization of physical power.
Nolan's Bane became a charismatic revolutionary, a self-proclaimed philosopher and strategist, and an intelligent and scary foe for anyone standing in his way.
The fact that Bane's immense strength and resilience didn't go anywhere didn't help the matter, and the villain even ended up being Bruce Wayne's toughest enemy yet.
Tom Hardy has always been a brilliant actor, and his performance in The Dark Knight Rises only confirmed it. Nolan's new sophisticated version of Bane came to life with the actor's incredible talent and expressions, and everyone saw that…
But Christopher Nolan doesn't think the public has enough appreciation for Hardy's performance in this movie.
As the director revealed, there was a lengthy discussion regarding Bane's mask. The team was trying to figure out how the mask should look and specifically, what parts of the actor's face should be covered.
Tom Hardy didn't mind concealing most of his face but asked for one small favor.
"We had all these discussions about the mask and what it would reveal and what it wouldn't reveal, and one of the things I remember [Tom Hardy] saying to me, he sort of put his finger up to his temple and his eyebrow and said, 'Can you give me this to play with? Let people see this,'" Christopher Nolan recalls.
Hardy was totally up for the challenge of acting with just his eyes and eyebrows, and he nailed the performance.
At no point in the movie were Bane's emotions unclear or elusive, and the viewers appreciated it; still, they didn't realize the pure genius of Tom Hardy's acting in The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan claims.
"What [Tom] did with that character has yet to be fully appreciated. It's an extraordinary performance, and truly amazing: the voice, the relationship between just seeing the eyes and the brow…
Sure enough, you see there in the film, this kind of Brando-esque brow, expressing all kinds of just monstrous things. It's really quite a performance," said the director.
Admittedly, it's high time to rewatch The Godfather and then hop back onto the finale of The Dark Knight trilogy to learn whether we can see what Christopher Nolan meant by calling Tom Hardy's performance "Brando-esque."
Source: IndieWire