The big takeaway from the six-minute IMAX preview of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, which recently started screening, was that the major villain, Bane (played by Tom Hardy), was totally impossible to understand. (And what you could understand sounded like Mr. Belvedere.) Nolan initially said that he wouldn’t be making changes to the sound mix — why should people be able to understand your blockbuster? — but Collider is now reporting that Warner Bros. has prevailed on the director to clean the audio up, at least a bit. A new soundtrack has apparently gone out to IMAX theaters, and though the dialogue remains the same, the background noise (of an airplane) has been reduced significantly, and other tweaks have been made so that you can actually hear what Bane is saying. Collider’s source did go on to say that the dialogue is only 40 to 50 percent clearer than it was before, so if you’ve begun to eagerly anticipate that moment when you turn to the person next to you and ask, “What did Bane just say?!” you still have your chance.
