The preview footage from The Dark Knight Rises has been winning near universal acclaim–except for one small thing. Audiences are complaining that the dialogue spoken by the new villain Bane is difficult to understand.
And that’s causing some worry for studio execs at Warner Brothers.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the studio is “scared to death” that when Rises hits theaters next summer, audiences won’t be able to fully understand the villain’s dialogue.
Sources also say some at Warners would like Nolan to change the sound mix, but the filmmaker, whose autonomy is well-earned (his Inception earned the studio more than $800 million and eight Oscar nominations), has informed executives that he plans only to alter the sound slightly, not to rework it completely.
“Chris wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn’t dumb things down,” says one high-level exec, declining to be named. “You’ve got to pedal faster to keep up.”
Nolan said similar things to The Hollywood Reporter at the prologue’s unveiling during a press event Dec. 8, explaining that it was OK for a moviegoer not to understand what was said at times, as long as the overall idea was conveyed. The filmmaker is currently editing the movie and won’t have a cut to show the studio for at least a couple pf months.
While Warners has supported Nolan’s wishes in the past, moviegoer complaints about the character could create pressure to make changes. Or the studio and Nolan can do nothing and hope that fan interest in The Dark Knight Rises outweighs any issues with understanding Bane’s dialogue.
He said, “when Gotham is ashes, I’ll let you die.” A little muffled but not as bad as Treebeard. If it’s a problem in the test screen just have the guy come in to re-read the lines. He’s got a mask on so there’s no lip sync issue.
It’s pretty full-on in the trailer, but the fact that Nolan is talking about dialing back a bit on HIS terms and keeping the overall effect is awesome. Love that a filmmaker as awesome as Christopher Nolan has so much autonomy.
I don’t know if we can embed YouTube clips here, but I saw one where they added subtitles to what Batman and Bane were saying. But soon even the guy writing the subtitles got confused and couldn’t tell what they were saying.
I don’t think you can embed a video in the comments here, but you could post a link to the actual video you’re referring to