14 DAY TRIAL // With all the hype surrounding Chris Nolan's third and final Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” there's one thing that's getting fans and studio executives worried: it's almost impossible to make out what Bane, the villain, is saying.
A 6-minute prologue to the film is still playing in IMAX theaters before “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” screenings and, as we also noted on two separate occasions, it's getting fans and studio bosses very hot under the collar.
Bane, the film's villain, wears a face mask at all times, because, through it, he inhales a gas that gives him superpowers. The prologue is set on a plane, which is being hijacked – and trust us, it's hard to understand what he's saying.
Word online has it that Warner Bros. has reached out to IMAX theaters, sending them a new audio for the scene, one that represents a compromise between Nolan's wishes and their own.
The director is aware of the fact that Bane's voice is muffled and, in that particular scene, covered by ambient noise, but he's already said that he doesn't plan on changing anything because he doesn't want to “dumb down” the film for audiences.
The studio, on the other hand, is pressuring him to clear up the audio because they don't want fans to be disappointed in the film and, because of it, lose revenue.
The compromise allegedly represents a new audio that tones down ambient noise to make Bane's voice a bit more intelligible, Collider reports.
“They’ve cleaned up the dialogue. They’ve gone in and lowered the background noise of the plane and other things, thus making Bane’s dialogue clearer and more understandable,” a trusted IMAX source initially told the e-zine.
Warner Bros. has since denied that they're changing the audio to the prologue but, as it happens, Collider's source isn't the only one to claim to have seen the footage – and to have found it many times more acceptable and easier to understand.
Commenters on SlashFilm also report the same: Bane is easier to understand now, so Warner must be doing something to the clip.
TheFilmStage believes that Warner has actually performed the change but doesn't want to “own up to it” lest they'd have to admit they did something wrong by not realizing what a challenge Bane's muffled voice could represent for viewers.
Collider chooses to stick with Warner and believe that the audio remains the same and, as such, still a problem.
“Saying that, I’ve seen the IMAX prologue three times and I still struggle to understand what Bane is saying. It’s a real issue,” the post in question says.
“The Dark Knight Rises” will be out in theaters on July 20, 2012 – plenty of time for this problem to go away.