One of the things The Dark Knight Rises is best remembered for is Bane’s voice, which was completely unintelligible to some – and as it turns out, it was originally more difficult to understand, but Nolan had it changed before the film came out. Batman has had an interesting history on the big screen, but perhaps his most successful run to date (with critics, audiences, and at the box office) is Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, which began in 2005 with Batman Begins and introduced Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne.
The first villains Bale’s Batman came across with were Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and Jonathan Crane a.k.a. Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), this last one appearing in all films of the trilogy. Batman Begins’ sequel, The Dark Knight, brought another version of the Joker through Heath Ledger and became one of the best superhero films ever made. The closing chapter in the trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, saw Batman meeting Selina Kyle a.k.a. Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), Miranda Tate/Talia al Ghul (Marion Cotillard), and Bane (Tom Hardy). The latter made a big impression thanks to his physical transformation, mask, and voice, even though many found him hard to understand – but his original voice would have been an even bigger challenge.
Bane’s voice was originally different and more in accordance with the mask that covered a big part of his face. His original voice could be heard in the IMAX presentation of the prologue (the airplane scene where Bane and company abduct Dr. Leonid Pavel), which played ahead of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and had a deeper tone and respirator-like sound that made it very hard to understand, though it also gave it a more villainous vibe. While it was much harder to understand what Bane was saying, it made sense that it sounded like that as he was wearing the mask, which supplied him with an analgesic gas to relieve pain, obviously making his lines hard to figure out. Still, people were understandably confused (and a bit annoyed), and some even thought it was a sound-mixing problem.
Nolan and company then decided to redub Bane’s scenes to make his dialogues easier to understand but without fully losing that menacing tone he originally had, and in comparison with the IMAX presentation, his lines are clearer, but many viewers still found it hard to understand him. Nolan initially denied that Bane’s voice was changed for the theatrical release of The Dark Knight Rises, saying that “things would come into focus” once the film was released, but the changes were very obvious, even for those who didn’t get to watch the IMAX version. Hardy’s accent was also criticized by many, but his tone and overall performance were mostly well-received, and Hardy’s intention of creating a contradiction between Bane’s voice and body definitely came through.
Changing Bane’s voice was a very wise move, as it would have been even harder to understand with all the extra noise, even if it added to the character and helped explained what the mask was there for. His long speeches, for example, would have gotten lost amidst the respirator-like noise and thus an important part of the story would have been left behind. Though it was still hard to understand for some, Hardy’s voice ultimately gave Bane a unique quality and helped make The Dark Knight Rises an unforgettable film – and, of course, it also made way for countless memes.
