Update: Bane Remains as Unintelligible as Ever in “Dark Knight Rises” Trailer

UPDATE: Contrary to rumors, David Itzikoff of the New York Times tweets that "Warner Bros. says 'no truth' to reports of new Dark Knight Rises prologue trailers going out with fixed Bane audio."

The hottest theater trailer currently running is the 6-minutye clip from "The Dark Knight Rises" that runs ahead of IMAX screenings of "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol." But it's also been the most vexing, as several folks have not unreasonably complained that the voice of new villain Bane (Tom Hardy), is all but impossible to understand. After having initially dismissed the complaints, it appears that director Chis Nolan may be relenting. Thank god.

"The Dark Knight" footage is great--truly exciting, original and eye-popping. But the simple fact is that Bane's dialog is unintelligible. There were similar complaints about the trailer that recently went online, but we were able to understand Bane easily enough.

Nolan was unmoved by the outcry, telling The Hollywood Reporter “that it was OK for a moviegoer not to understand what was said at times, as long as the overall idea was conveyed.”

And lest they upset their most reliable moneymaker (now that Harry Potter is over), Warner Bros. stood by their man, telling THR, “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.”

What make's Nolan stance so frustrating is that it would be the easiest thing in the world to fix. They've already got the dialog recorded, they would just need to tweak the mix, not alter in any substantive way (Bane's mask covers his mouth, so you don't even have to worry about synching issues). Now it looks like cooler heads have prevailed, as a source has told Collider that a new soundtrack for the "TDKR" trailer has been delivered:

“A friend of mine who is an IMAX projectionist told me they received a new soundtrack for the Dark Knight Rises prologue. He said it’s now a combo soundtrack with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, but the cool thing about this is that 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. 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.”

Nolan has definitely earned our trust as a filmmaker, time and again, taking huge risks to bring his vision to life, with the payoff coming time and again. What's funny is that the one hard and fast criticism we have to Nolan's previous Batman films is the dopey growl that Christian Bale employs when he's in costume. It'd be great if Nolan was actually fixing this Bane issue before it became a part of the mythology.

What's gonna be awesome is when this movie hits home video and you can select "Intelligible Bane" or "Nolan's Bane."

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