Tom Hardy & Chris Nolan Speak About Bane

Tom Hardy speaks for the first time about taking on masked villain Bane in the third Batman installment The Dark Knight Rises. And Christopher Nolan speaks for the first time about Hardy and Bane. The duo gave the interview exclusively to UK’s Empire magazine for a special Batman/Bane edition embargoed until today: Tom Hardy On Bane: Hes brutal, brutal. Hes expedient delivery of brutality. And you know, hes a big dude. Hes a big dude whos incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and orientated fighting style. The result is clear. Do you know what I mean? Its: f**k off and die. Quicker. Quicker. Everything is thought out way before. Hes hit you, hes already hit somebody else. Its not about fighting. Its just about carnage with Bane. Hes a smashing machine. Hes a wrecking ball. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, its nasty. Anything from small joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. Its anything he can get away with. He is a terrorist in his mentality as well as brutal action. So hes horrible. A really horrible piece of work. About filming the fight scenes: Its very overwhelming. When youre training in a rehearsal room you go, Okay, I have a contact with seven people. This guy I chin, this one I slip and I punch, this one I pick up and suplex, this guy I kick in the face, and this one, he stops a hammer with his head. And then I meet Batman. Thats all alright in a rehearsal room, but then you add 1,000 people that are all dressed the same as the seven youre supposed to hit cause theyre all police officers and I dont know where my police officers are. But the stuntmasters like, Dont worry. They will find you. About Christian Bales Batman: He looks really intimidating! Theres a three-year-old in me thats going, Oh my God thats Batman! Thats Batman and hes going to hit me! But I love Batman! Then I look in the mirror. And I hit him back. Twice as hard. Christopher Nolan On Bane: With Bane, we are looking to give Batman a physical challenge that he hasnt had before, says the films director, Christopher Nolan. With our choice of villain and with our choice of story were testing Batman both physically as well as mentally. Also, in terms of finishing our story and increasing its scope, we were trying to craft an epic, so the physicality of the film became very important.Banes a very different kind of villain than Batman has faced before in our films. Hes a great sort of movie monster, but with an incredible brain, and that was a side of him that hadnt been tapped before. Because the stories from the comics are very epic and very evocative very much in the way that Bruce Waynes origin story is epic and evocative. We were looking to really parallel that with our choice of villain. So he is a worthy adversary. What Bane represents in the comics is the ultimate physical villain. Aboutcasting Tom Hardy in the role: He has this incredible disjunct between the expressiveness of the voice and the stillness of the movement of his body. Hes found a way to play a character who is enormous and powerful with a sort of calm to it, but also is able to be incredibly fast at times. Unpredictable. He just has a raw threat to him thats extraordinary. Its a very powerful thing when you see it come together, beyond what I had ever imagined. Thats what you get from working with great actors.