Tom Hardy as Bane in 'The Dark Knight Rises'
If you’re among the few who — like me — haven’t yet been to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 at the theater, then you haven’t seen this first teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises yet. At long last, it’s online.
Go here and watch the trailer, then keep reading below for my thoughts.
So did you get that this is the final Batman movie from Christopher Nolan? I think there were like three mentions in there of ending, finale, never-doing-another-one-of-these-movies-ever kind of stuff. Okay, it’s The End. I’d rather the series went out on a high, with a fantastic crescendo, than drag on forever. So bring it.
What do you make of Gordon in a hospital bed, looking pretty close to death’s door? That had to be Bruce Wayne he was talking to, urging Batman to “return,” so from this we can infer:
- After the events of The Dark Knight, Batman retired from fighting crime.
- At some point along the way, Gordon finally figured out who was behind Batman’s cowl.
- A dire new situation has arisen, something threatening all of Gotham and nearly ending Gordon’s life. The culprit: Bane. Without a doubt.
Whatever’s happened, Gotham can no longer survive without its Bat-guardian, and when Bruce visits Gordon in the hospital, they have a major heart-to-heart, leading to Batman’s return.
The trailer also gives us a brief glimpse of Tom Hardy as Bane, in his freakish mask (above), and later we see another glimpse of Batman and Bane facing off. Bane looks absolutely ginormous, making me wonder if Nolan is adding to Hardy’s bulk via digital manipulation. It’s not like it’s impossible to add convincing digital effects to human bodies. (Digital trickery is used in the Harry Potter movies to flatten most of Ralph Finnes’ face, to turn him into Voldemort, because it’s too hard a job for prosthetic makeup to pull off.)
What do you think of the trailer, and did any details jump out at you that I missed?
Possibly not the last Batman movie from Christopher Nolan, but at least the last one in this trilogy and probably with Christian Bale as Batman. He may be doing the next series of Batman movies where the Batman in that those will be in the possible Justice League series of movies.