If you've heard anything about the prologue for The Dark Knight Rises currently running on some IMAX screens in front of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, you've probably heard people complaining about Bane's voice. The villain played by Tom Hardy wears a mask that covers his entire face, and though in the comic books it just makes him look all the more intimidating, on film it makes his dialogue all the harder to understand-- and in a big action scene, it's difficult to focus on understanding him while also following the action.
When I saw the prologue I did everything I could to write down Bane's dialogue but found it impossible; I'm not sure we'll ever fully know exactly what Bane is saying in that scene, but if you believe some script pages that surfaced at What Would Tyler Durden Do, the answer may already be online. According to them a source at Warner Bros. sent them copies of that scene from the script-- nothing before and nothing after, so don't go hoping for any plot spoilers-- and it's at least a convincing mockup of a script for the scene in question (though it doesn't include DAY or NIGHT designations, which is suspect). Seeing it all written down Bane doesn't seem to have as much dialogue as I remembered, but it does clear up some of his statements, and makes it clear that I was pretty much correct in what I was guessing he said. Take the following exchange for example, which happens near the end of the scene:
YOUNG MAN:Have we started a fire?BANE:The fire rises.Dr Pavel is screaming.BANE:Calm down Doctor. Now is not the time for fear. That comes later.
You can read more over there if you like-- again, it's exclusively script pages from the prologue scene, so there are no spoilers if you already know what happens in the prologue. I can't promise that these are genuine script pages, but they certainly seem to be what Bane said in the scene, so I'm willing to take them as an honest transcript. Does this clear things up from you from the prologue? Or was Bane more intimidating a villain when you couldn't really understand what he was saying? Part of me is leaning toward the latter-- but when and/or if I see the prologue again, I'll be glad to have a bit better idea of what is going on.
