As impressed as we all have been with the DARK KNIGHT RISES trailer and prologue, there’s been one point of contention that won’t go away.
There seems to be a pretty steep divide as to who can understand Bane’s voice, muffled behind his mask, and who can’t. The fact that such a divide even exists is a problem for the film, and reportedly has studio executives worried over at Warner Bros.
But even amidst all this, Chris Nolan maintains that he will not go back and change Bane’s dialogue, only tweak it a bit in editing. He has constantly maintained that it’s not absolutely necessary to understand every word Bane says, only that you get a general idea of what he’s saying.
As much as I’m on the “In Nolan We Trust” train, I think he’s wrong here. He can’t know what makes something uncomfortable for people. Like he might not think we have to hear every word, but even if he believes that, there are plenty of us who will be driven crazy if we have to keep straining our ears to try and understand what Bane’s saying, even if it’s not “important” that we do so.
For example, I only caught half of what was a rather good line from the trailer, I heard “Mrmph mrmm pmrph, you have my permission to die.” Even after my third viewing, I had to have the “When Gotham is in ashes” part spelled out for me. If I can miss this much in just one sentence, I’m wondering how the entirety of the movie is going to go.
If you can understand it completely, that’s great, but I’m definitely worried that if unchecked, this could be a big issue for a lot of people that could overshadow an otherwise great movie.