Christopher Nolan has never been one to overshare, and certainly when it comes to deleted scenes, it's not exactly something he believes in. Neither "Batman Begins" or "The Dark Knight" home video releases contain any extra footage among their plethora of extras, and thus far with "The Dark Knight Rises" there has only been one official still and a script page that reveals anything that Nolan might've left on the cutting room floor. But it appears there is certainly a bit more.
Costume designer Lindy Hemming recently sat down with GQ to talk about her work on the movie (which she hasn't seen yet!) and in the process of talking about how she suited up Bane, casually revealed that an origin story style sequence for the villain wound up being removed from the movie. Here's what she had to say:
"…the other thing that you should have seen during that [prison] sequence is [Bane] being injured in his youth. So one of the fundamental things about his costume is that he has this scar from the back injury. Even if he hasn't got the bulletproof vest on, he still has to wear the waist belt and the braces. In that scene in the prison, where he's learning to fight the same way Batman learned to fight, he's wearing an early version of his waist belt. It's showing support, but it's not the finished one he eventually wears. He's also wearing an early version of his gas mask, all glued together.
…there's a whole early section for Tom Hardy where he's fighting and being taunted by people. He's got chains on him, and he's standing on a wooden thing while people are attacking him. And in that scene, he's wearing a much more ragged, primitive version of the mask.
…I won't elaborate on it too much, because it isn't in the film, but there was another section that showed you why he had the mask and where it came from."
That's pretty fascinating stuff, and a unique insight into Nolan's editing process. Certainly, with the movie running nearly three hours long, stuff had to go, but it seems Nolan preferred Bane being more of an unknowable menace rather than one who is fully explained, and it's an interesting choice. We'd have to agree that it's certainly a bit more frightning (particularly if you're not up on your comic lore) for Bane to emerge as a massive, masked threat to Gotham, leaving his backstory a bit more ephemeral. Did we need to see training scenes to believe in his brutal strength? Not really. Any chance we'll actually see this sequence? We're not holding our breath, so you'll probably have to leave it to your imagination.
But what's very real is how well the movie is doing. So much for those box-office reports that were ready to write off the film in its second week after the Aurora tragedy slowed down the film's receipts. Having reached the $732 million mark worldwide after three weeks, "The Dark Knight Rises" has surpassed "Ice Age: Continental Drift" as the second highest grossing film of the year worldwide. Domestically, 'TDKR' trails "The Hunger Games" ($358 million to $406 million) for the number two slot, but at the rate its going, Nolan's picture should be able to surpass that before all is said and done. And while "The Dark Knight Rises" likely cannot outdo "The Avengers" globally or domestically for the title of number one grossing film of 2012 (it's at a monstrous $1.4 billion, making it the third highest grossing picture of all time), the final film in the Batman trilogy still could reach the billion mark before all is said and done.
Three weeks and $732 million worldwide, with the foreign grosses still on par with the domestic ones (and they usually outperform the U.S. by almost double with major tentpoles)? Don't be shocked if the slow-moving juggernaut eventually surpasses $1 billion at the box office before the run is over. And with little in the way of competition until September (aside from "The Bourne Legacy" this weekend), it looks like The Bat will be flying high for a while.
I was hoping for a video clip upon reading this title. :[
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yes modine was a waste of screen time. plus bane was reduced to being shot dead after all he survived? film was great but def could have been better.
This movies definitely deserves a directors cut. Its so strange because at no point while watching the movie did i even realize how quick time had passed it felt to short to be a 2.30hrs.
I don't care if this movie would have went on for over 3:00 hours because it was after all the ending to a fantastic trilogy. I really hope Nolan releases a Directors cut for this.
I think The Joker proved its not important how or where you got the scars but how you scare the crap out of people after you got them. Why do people need so many questions answered in movies, just enjoy whats in front of you!
My TDKR Box office 2 cents:
The Dark Knight was in theaters from July 18th 2008 until March 1st 2009. 33 weeks in theaters, albeit a shrinking number of theaters showing said film, down to even 7 at one point, and then back up to 54, dropping from 4,366 screen at it's weekend debut.
TDKR could most certainly attain a box office of that caliber if allowed to exist until NEXT SPRING. And it still opened wider than any film, ever at the box office, with 4,404 screens.
They should have cut Modine's screen time in half and had more Bane and more Juno Temple. The training sequence would have happened during Talias reveal monologue and therefore would not have affected the element of the big mysterious bad guy showing up out of nowhere that worked so well in the beginning of the film. Honestly an extra shot of the mask in a. Early stage would have gone a long way cause I found it annoying they didn't explain it more, or the scars on his back for that matter, except to say he got jumped in prison. This would be rad as a bonus scene on the dvd
No.2 film my backside. Seen the Hunger Games, the Avengers (twice) and TDKR (twice) and TDKR cannot be compared with either of them. Avengers was just a money spinning mash up of average movies.
When is Nolan gonna stop playing games and give the nerds what they want. Epic four hour cuts of these movies. That being said, what TV network is going to spring on the badass epic cable mini-series telling some legendary comic book arc on HBO?
hahahaha No 2 film??
They had to cut the film because of IMAX projection constraints … I think that story about it being about 4 hours long in its first cut was true.
"We'd have to agree that it's certainly a bit more frightning (particularly if you're not up on your comic lore) for Bane to emerge as a massive, masked threat to Gotham, leaving his backstory a bit more ephemeral." His back story isn't 'ephemeral' (look that word up), it's just absent — one of many absences in the movie (which, by the way, I liked [certainly better than TDK, whose absences and lapses in logic are too many to count]). His motivations are incredibly nebulous, and this, rather than making him mysterious in a compelling way, just leaves us unable to grasp why he would go through all this trouble to destroy a entire city in such an esoteric, super complex, difficult way, why he hates Batman so damn much, etc. I wish Nolan had left that stuff in. All along we wait for some way to understand Bane's motivations, and it really never arrives (the Tahlia stuff was thin — not nearly enough to make sense of his whole grand scheme)
Couldn't Nolan string together a few tasty bits of footage from the cutting room floor and sequence it to some of Zimmer's score as a "sizzle reel" of outtakes for the Blu-ray? He could do the same for TDK, and we'd finally see the two deleted Ledger scenes (his getaway in the back of the cop car after the Dent fundraiser and his getaway in the school bus after blowing up the hospital). That way, we get to see this stuff in HQ, but it keeps the sanctity of the finished movie because it's part of a montage and not presented like a deleted scene to be inserted back into the movie.
Agree with Christian.
Well said, Christian! I fully agree! TDKR for all the awards!
The succes is so well-deserved. It's the most intelligent blockbuster film since… Inception?! Damn, can anybody else step up and make something both clever and action-packed besides Nolan? Looking forward to Rian Johnson's "Looper" and Sam Mendes' "Skyfall" now.