Come anticipate "The Dark Knight Rises" with *BATSPOILERS*

does anyone else feel like the audio mix on the Bane voice sucked? every time he talked it seemed like they just patched in an audio track so you'd get little breathing noises just before and after he spoke but no sound from him in between lines (unlike, say, Darth Vader)? not that he should've constantly been loudly breathing but it sounded awkward and wrong to me. also i didn't really care for the voice itself, his cadences were sometimes almost Yoda-like (sorry for multiple Star Wars refs).

I thought the voice was menacing enough, but I literally could not pick up more than half of what he was saying. Making sure of one before the other seems so basic.

yeah, it was an extremely obvious ADR job

There were like 3-4 times that I didn't understand Bane, which is less than ideal, but I felt like it could've been worse too

I thought it might have been me, but my friend said he had the same problem. I don't know, maybe it was partly the theatre, but I didn't have trouble with any of the other characters.

i pretty much had no problem understanding Bane, and the maybe couple of times i didn't catch his line i didn't mind since he basically never said anything especially clever or integral to the plot. but i guess i'm way in the minority in thinking Bane was one of the movie's biggest weaknesses (and that Catwoman was one of its biggest strengths).

i think the soundsystem of the theater might be a big factor. i saw it in IMAX and it was booming from every direction

Understood him fine (would have been something if they went with the original, completely unintelligible voice though), just thought he was lame

i either never watched the preview w/ the original voice or saw it once and don't remember it so i just have an idealized idea of it being unintelligible but really intense and scary compared to what they ended up with.

i guess i'm way in the minority in thinking Bane was one of the movie's biggest weaknesses (and that Catwoman was one of its biggest strengths).

― some random MC rappin' mcdude (some dude), Thursday, August 2, 2012 6:51 PM (7 minutes ago)

a minority of at least two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShlukoB1xMY

That sounds right--we opted to go to the smaller, less attended theatre. (I'll mention in passing that I just read David Edelstein's review, and he had the same problem: "...but Hardy's distorted voice is a cross between Darth Vader and Andy Kaufman's Foreign Man. He's unintelligible." But louder would have helped, I'm sure.) Agree completely that Hathaway was one of the film's strengths.

I can hear him fine in the final-film portion of that clip. There's no way the sound was that clear in what we saw this afternoon.

ok that comparison really makes me wish they hadn't re-recorded it, in almost every instance the final version sounds all goofy and jaunty by comparison.

yeah, line delivery is way better in the original, though nearly unintelligible

I also like that they tried to make the film timely. I'm sure the OWS angle strikes many people as grasping at relevance, possibly even laughably so, and I wouldn't argue the point. But all in all, and compared to existing in a vacuum, I'm fine with that--Hathaway's "There's a storm coming" line is good. I just wish they had done something more with that. It's there, then it's not there.

The film was written already when that shit was going on.

Interesting. (Coppola wrote the script for The Conversation years before Watergate.) I guess they were either very prescient, or caught a break.

to be fair economic equality and class warfare were pretty huge topics of national discussion for 2-3 years before OWS, that was just kind of the thing that ultimately became the brand name that encapsulated that energy

that conflict would have been enough to carry the story. but we end up getting flooded with league of shadows back story that dulled things out imo.

movie needed a lot more Catwoman

but I liked it ok

yeah, it was an extremely obvious ADR job

― Number None, Thursday, August 2, 2012 9:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude is wearing a giant metal mask over his mouth, there is no way this could NOT have been an ADR job

what are you, some kind of cinema theory know it all

sound mix was ass

i have to assume s1ocki saying tom hardy was the best thing in this isn't the same thing as saying tom hardy did the best job, unless s1ocki just wants to watch the world burn.

felt like there might have been key parts of the dialogue they cleaned up to a comic degree, big plot points, and other parts they let stay at "no, matt-main, i will gespacho SOIL". it was definitely sort of like he pressed an intercom button whenever he wanted to speak, maybe consistent breathing was just too clearly vader-esque.

Knowing me, Bane, knowing you, Batman...ah HA-aa!

All I'm saying is his voice is the only thing I remember enjoying at all in this misbegotten lump of a movie

yeah that's what i figured

that voice comparison video is cracking me UP - - - jesus, how hilarious would this movie have been if they'd left the original voice in as just this completely unintelligible mishmash? He sounds like the grownups in Peanuts specials! "All right, Bane, what game are you trying to play here?!" "BWHSDLKFJ, FAhAHLK! OJSDFS JK SDA DFSKJDF FLARHGHH!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBqY6cJD3CE

"Ever do any fishing?"
"BARGHHHLKA HHAHGGGHAHHGHH"
"Oh really? Where do you usually go?"

Saw this last night. What a load of crabapples. Bored within 20 minutes and I just waited and waited for it to improve and despite getting a bit better by the last half hour it was largely poop with extra clagnuts on top.

yeah, it was an extremely obvious ADR job

― Number None, Thursday, August 2, 2012 9:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude is wearing a giant metal mask over his mouth, there is no way this could NOT have been an ADR job

― joaquin haus-partizan (s1ocki), Friday, 3 August 2012 06:29 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

well it wasn't originally, hence the unintelligibility. What i'm saying is they did a bad job of making it sound like the voice was actually emanating from Bane's mouth at all

What does ADR stand for?

Inspired by the Bane voice comparison clip, I spent our drive to work saying "It doens't matter who we are; what matters is our plan" - Em says I got it down pat. It then occured to me that there's a cadence to his delivery that really matches nursery rhymes...

Try saying "Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go" in the style of Hardy-as-Bane - tremendous fun for all the family.

Automated Dialogue Replacement, or Additional Dialogue Recording (ADR), is the process of re-recording the original dialogue after the filming process for the purpose of obtaining a cleaner, more intelligible dialogue track

It's dubbing basically

i thought his opening line on the plane was particularly jarring, to the point of confusing me - it didn't at all sound like it was coming from the same location as everything else.

Hardy's facial expressions, to the extent that you could see them, often looked pretty goofy or like they had no relationship to the dialogue. imo the Bane casting and character design was a similar gambit as w/ the Joker but with no real payoff for that risk.

Yeah, cosign on that; I remember really searching the frame to try and figure out who was meant to be speaking.

i almost welcomed the bane voice after scenes when the other characters were whispering over loud music cues or otherwise being unintelligible. it was hard to understand sometimes but at least it was way too loud, in a close-mic'ed, right-in-your-ear way.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who found the music/background noise so overbearing I couldn't hear any of the dialogue (in fact Bane's voice boomed nicely over everything compared to say, Gordon's from whom I could barely make out a sentence). I assumed it was down to the cinema I was watching it in, but seems this was a problem in quite a few places.

yeah it was so upfront in the mix that it seemed like they just threw up their hands like "fine, you want to hear it better? we're going to 11 so you can't ask us to turn it up more" (xpost)

i honestly didn't notice or think about the score the entire movie. i have no memory of the Inception sound everybody always talks about either.

here, refresh your memory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2jUhnCU9iA

I saw TDKR in a normal (film projection!) theater with good THX sound that wasn't over-cranked, and in an IMAX theater with the sound blasting and a lot more bass. The latter actually obscured some dialogue with the musical cues, and the score seemed a lot louder.

Inception had a lot of musical cues, some dude might just be a visual memory person.

that's actually generally not true! like i tend to have more vivid memories of, say, the exact sound of a line of dialogue than the way an actor looked while saying it. i just hear these scores as oh moody bombastic Hans Zimmer stuff ho hum, whereas there are some recent movies that i felt were actively ruined for my by obtrusive scores (Miracle At St. Anna and There Will Be Blood come to mind).

ruined for my me

Was going to say "I wish there were more scenes like Catwoman's well-planned stand-off at the bar" but really that's saying "I wish this was more like The Dark Knight"

also I know it's already been mentioned, but holy de ja vu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSZJufHv5kg

i would gain some respect for Nolan if it turned out that was a deliberate homage

Bane's on a plane! Why because it look interesting. No wait, two planes for some reason. Naughty Bane. Meanwhile, ah Gotham's a conservative paradise now that all that junk that happened with the Joker is over. Everybody's happy cos the prisons are full of bad guys and the mayor's dead and no Batman and Bruce Wayne's grown a wispy bumfluff beard and never goes out. But hold on, there's a naughty lady come and steal his mother's pearls. This makes Bruce very angry and flirty. Bye bye Batman, Catwoman goes to an Amsterdam coffeeshop and double-crosses some gangsters about some fingerprints or something, I didn't really understand that bit. And just outside, Commissioner Gordon huffs and puffs around the streets till he falls down a hole and finds Bane hanging around down there. He is an underground criminal - literally!! "Bruce Wayne", he says, "Bane is hanging around the sewer - these are the end of times, we need Batman!". "Not sure about that, but I am kind of cross about that necklace going missing, okay I'll see what I can do". Morgan Freeman to the rescue - "Here, I've got loads of fancy toys I've been building while you were sitting around picking your bum and eating bacon sandwiches just in case you wanna have another pop at this caped crusader venture of yours". "Wicked, now I can kick a wall." BAM!
Next thing, Bane breaks into a stock exchange with an iPad and a bunch of pocket-motorbikes and proceeds to wipe all the accounts. Then he kidnaps a bunch of bankers - most of them fall off the bikes, but one of them has a jetpack and goes rocketing up into the air! Batman goes after them, but the stupid police decide to chase him instead of Bane. Luckily Batman's Owl Ship form Watchmen flying batcopter outsmarts them and he manages to get round to beating up a bunch of bad guys who are threatening Catwoman. Cue another flirty scene and a bit where she kicks someone in the nuts or something.
Then I don't remember what happens but somehow Batman meets up with Catwoman and she shows him to Bane and Batman and Bane have a weak little bitchfight in which Bane kicks Batman's arse, and it turns out they're fighting right under Bruce Wayne's house and it's like WTF, right? Bane flies Bruce Wayne half the way around the world to a big well in the middle of some middle-eastern desert and tells him he'll go mad because he won't be able to get out and in fact he's in prison in his own MIND! It's kind of shit in there, but the old men are okay and they give him bacon sandwiches and a cup of tea and chat with him and stuff.
Meanwhile, Bane has gone all the way back to Gotham and blows up a stadium "Mwahahaha! I am a psychopathic Socialist who loves everyone, and I'm going to show you how much I love you by blowing up a stadium and doing something with an atomic bomb!" He traps all the cops in the city in a big tunnel and freezes the city until all the water is turned to ice.
Then he releases all the criminals from prison, including the Scarecrow who piles a bunch of desks up in a courtroom and sentences policemen to go and walk on the frozen river.
Meanwhile Batman is rubbish at jumping out of the hole. He spends months there. It's well shit.
More stuff happens - Robin running around single-handedly keeping the peace while Commissioner Gordon does more huffing and wheezing while he attempts to get inside a rubbish skip for some reason.
Finally Batman manages to jump out the hole, and bounces all the way back to Gotham doublequick, but it's been OMG three months or whatever and Gotham's a right old tip. All of a surgeon, Catwoman who's a jewel-thief or something but also wants a clean slate (some sort of USB stick that'll do something, I dunno what... Anyway, she's having second thoughts about the world turning into an anarchist shithole even though her retarded lesbian lover thinks it's well good. Bane starts barking a bunch of stuff about eating rich people, and generally being a right cunt. Just when Commissioner Gordon's about to go through the very thin ice, Batman strides across to meet him like ain't no thing and starts letting off fireworks and stuff, and it's all BATMAN'S BACK! HE'S NOT A CRIMINAL! WOO! WOOP! And he and Bane have another fight but this time Batman's better and chops him in the gob, but Catwoman eventually has to come along and shoot him, cos guns solve everything really - don't be a poof! Anyway, it turns out Batman's girlfriend was *gasp* the mastermind behind it all after all and she curls up in a car like a little mouse, waiting for the bomb to go off "And I will have fulfilled my father's stupid nonsensical wish" she purrs. Wow, what a massive bitch, eh? Luckily Batman mutters somethign about "auto pilot" and flies out in his Transformers motorbikecopter over the sea and BOOOM! It explodes, and he's dead, but everything's okay! Hooray, sad ending, boohoo. The End

But no, not the end end, because Alfred, who fucked off earlier because Bruce Wayne kept doing Batman things, sees him in a cafe with Catwoman (who's a goodie) and it's all, eh, eh winkies, eh?

End.