Tom Hardy talks Bane vs. Joker and the voice for The Dark Knight Rises

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Tom Hardy recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly on all things Bane. Yes, he mentioned the voice. The one thing that people are getting hung up over. He also talks about the different sorts of villainy when it comes to Bane vs. the Joker.

Check it out below and reignite your excitement for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

On wearing the Bane mask:

“I think he worried it would be something I might not consider because wearing a mask might damage my career or something. He thought I’d be worried that the audience couldn’t see my beautiful face,” says Hardy, who also worked for Nolan in the filmmaker’s 2010 Oscar-nominated smash Inception. “Like I care. It’s Chris Nolan! I would wear a paper bag over my head for that man.”

The tone of the villain and the voice:

“There were two doors we could walk through,” says Hardy. “We could play a very straightforward villain or we could go through this very quirky door, which is totally justified by the text but may seem very, very stupid.” Not surprisingly, Hardy decided to go for the second option. “It’s a risk, because we could be laughed at—or it could be very fresh and exciting,” he says. While some found his dialogue incomprehensible in the IMAX-exclusive sneak peek attached to Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol last December, the actor asks for patience. “The audience mustn’t be too concerned about the mumbly voice,” says Hardy. “As the film progresses, I think you’ll be able to tune to its setting.”

The Joker vs. Bane:

“I think the politics of the film are going to be hotly debated one way or another, as they were in the last film,” says Nolan. Listening to Hardy compare Bane to the scarred, clown-faced villain who terrorized Gotham City in The Dark Knight, you almost get the feeling of a revolutionary usurper with tremendous resources. “The Joker didn’t care—he just wanted to see the world burn, and he was a master of chaos and destruction, unscrupulous and crazy. Bane is not that guy,” says Hardy. “There is a very meticulous and calculated way about Bane. There is a huge orchestration of organization to his ambition. He is also a physical threat to Batman. There is nothing vague about Bane. No jokes. He’s a very clean, clear villain.”