Has Nolan Already Buckled And Remixed Bane For The Dark Knight Rises?

It only took one preview of the The Dark Knight Rises‘ IMAX prologue for many minds to be made up.

There was considerable dissent regarding the way Christopher Nolan and company had recorded and mixed the dialogue of Bane, who not only speaks through a mask but with an English accent – two things I can tell you from personal experience that really cut down on folks’ ability to know when you’re saying the safe word what you’re saying.

There was some confusion about what would be done. Would Nolan call in Tom Hardy for a series of ADR sessions and replace the dialogue? Would the mix by tweaked to make the dialogue a little less crowded and compressed? Or would the filmmakers do nothing at all and stand by their “vision”? (You know, insomuch as anyone can have a vision about audio).

According to Collider, the fix is already underway and IMAX cinemas have already received a new soundtrack for the prologue. According to their unnamed source:

A friend of mine who is an IMAX projectionist told me they received a new soundtrack for the Dark Knight Rises prologue… They’ve gone in and lowered the background noise of the plane and other things, thus making Bane’s dialogue clearer and more understandable.

Right, so they’ve had an e-mail from somebody who has a friend who works as a projectionist? So, as yet, it’s just hearsay. I’m sure Warner Bros. can be squeezed for some kind of statement before long…

Now, the particularly flimsy, and potentially plant-sounding part of the report is the last line. Of this mysterious IMAX projectionist, the e-mailing buddy says:

He asked some people after they left the movie if they could understand Bane and they all said they had no issue understanding him, and were excited for the movie.

Well, that’s hardly scientific, with a PR cherry on top.

If Nolan has gone for a fix, it suggests that he does want the audience to hear Bane’s dialogue and that the character isn’t being built up as deliberately incomprehensible. In that case, he’s got a tough job on his hands – giving the character the masked quality he’s interested in, keeping the big action-movie sound stage alive with incident and detail, yet at the same time, rendering the dialogue clear enough to understand.

There’s a great DVD special feature to be had from this story, tracking the intent with Bane and the conception of his voice, the production’s reactions to the immediate audience response, and the nature of their tweaks. I hope they have the nerve to be chronicling this, and to present it to us candidly, but I’m not going to hold my breath.