The Dark Knight Rises' Early Viewers Were Cussing at Tom Hardy's Bane Really Bad
Today, Tom Hardy is largely praised for his Bane performance in The Dark Knight Rises — but the early viewers hated this one detail that got changed later.
Christopher Nolan ’s The Dark Knight trilogy is still said to be the best superhero franchise of all time by many. Apart from the new grim take on the idea and the amazing atmosphere and visuals of the trilogy, it also boasted outstanding villains: Ra's al Ghul, Joker, and Bane are each unique in scary in very different ways.
Of all the antagonist actors in the trilogy, Tom Hardy had it the hardest (pun intended): unlike his predecessors, he was aware that he’d be compared to Heath Ledger whose performance in the previous movie was impossible to match. Despite that, Hardy managed to make his Bane everything but a shadow of Joker.
Still, even though Hardy’s villain was largely praised after the movie’s release, it was mostly thanks to the early viewers whose feedback helped to fix a huge mistake that would’ve ruined the experience for everyone later on. Apparently, in the initial version of the movie, it was pretty much impossible to understand Bane’s lines!
After learning that no one could even make sense of what he was saying on the screen, Tom Hardy re-recorded the majority of his lines throughout the entire duration of The Dark Knight Rises — luckily, Bane’s face mask allowed him to do it really easy since there was no lip-syncing involved. Soon, the movie was fixed.
It’s crazy to think that no one, including Hardy, Nolan, and the entire post-production crew had noticed that Bane’s lines were so incoherent and the movie made it to the early screenings the way it was prior to the changes. If not for the early viewers’ feedback, The Dark Knight Rises’ release could’ve been disastrous.
But in the end, even though it took dumb luck to fix the issue before the release, the movie was complete, and the public was happy with the result. The Dark Knight Rises put a great and very suiting end to Christopher Nolan’s iconic trilogy and allowed Christian Bale ’s Batman to retire with style after defeating his scariest foe.
Source: Gothamist