Thought Bane's Voice Was Bad? Burton Needed A Nicholson Translator On Batman Set
Tom Hardy's voice as Bane Dark in Knight Rises is sometimes criticized – between the accent he imitated, speaking through a mask and changing tone, it might be difficult to discern what he is saying.
But such difficulties of the viewers were nothing compared to difficulties of Tim Burton when communicating with the actor who portrayed another famous Batman villain – Jack Nicholson, who played The Joker in Batman (1989).
Sure, Nicholson pronounced his character's lines clearly, but when off-camera, he had a habit of speaking rapidly and stringing together phrases in a way which made comprehending what he was trying to say difficult, as can be seen in this making-of featurette.
"For instance, they had a good feeling about it, but in the area which I'm involved in it, I don't care, but it also cost me some dough, they were totally unprepared for the level of the success of the movie."
Tim Burton said about that later in an interview with Empire (via).
"Jack has a very abstract way of speaking. So he would say things to me and I'd go, 'Yeah, I get it,' and then I'd go to someone, 'What the f*** was he just talking about?'"
That difficulty added to the heap of other troubles, which afflicted Burton at the time. Before his Batman films, Burton gained a good reputation thanks to success of Beetlejuice, but he still was a relatively novice filmmaker, with only two films under his belt. Batman was a big project, its budget of $48 million on the very high end of movie budgets for its time.
And people who are used to multiple superhero blockbusters coming out every year may underestimate how much of a gamble it was, with superhero movies seemingly dead after the Superman film series fizzled out in a string of bad sequels.
Burton's career was hanging on its success, while he had to defend his creative decisions before the studio, and handle actors vastly more experienced than him, above all Jack Nicholson himself, at the time one of the biggest stars in the world.
Thankfully, Jack, his manner of speech aside, proved to be an exceptionally helpful man, as Burton added in the same interview.
"[Nicholson] protected me and nurtured me, kept me going, by just not getting too overwhelmed with the whole thing. I felt really supported by him in a very deep way. I was young and dealing with a big studio, and he just quietly gave me the confidence to do what I needed to do."