Over een paar maanden gaat The Dark Knight Rises in première, het derde en laatste deel in de filmreeks over Batman van Christopher Nolan. Vanaf deze week werkt de marketingafdeling weer even extra hard, aangezien de proloog van zeven minuten in enkele buitenlandse bioscopen te zien zal zijn. Bovendien werd er afgelopen zondag een nieuwe poster vrijgegeven, en volgens de geruchten zou er later deze week wel eens een nieuwe trailer kunnen verschijnen.

Ook de filmmaker zelf werkt via een interview met de LA Times mee aan de promotie, terwijl hij de pers normaal gesproken niet vaak te woord staat. In het interview gaat Nolan verder in op Bane, de nieuwe vijand die gespeeld wordt door Tom Hardy:

"I didn't know him very well. David Goyer got me a bunch of stuff on him and we looked into him. I only knew him by name, I wasn't familiar with his back story. He's a very cool character. And getting an actor like Tom to take it on, you know you're going to get something very special. Tom is somebody who really knows how to put character into every gesture, every aspect of his physicality in the way that great actors can... With Bane, the physicality is the thing. With a good villain you need an archetype, you know, you need the extreme of some type of villainy.

The Joker is obviously a particular archetype of diabolical, chaotic anarchy and has a devilish sense of humor. Bane, to me, is something we haven't dealt with in the films. We wanted to do something very different in this film. He's a primarily physical villain, he's a classic movie monster in a way — but with a terrific brain. I think he's a fascinating character. I think people are going to get a kick out of what we've done with him."

Een ander belangrijk detail dat onlangs naar voren kwam is dat de nieuwe verhaallijn zich acht jaar na The Dark Knight zal afspelen. Nolan had hierover het volgende te zeggen:

"It will make a lot more sense to people when they see the film. But it's not a great mystery — it's the jumping-off point for the film — but it's hard for me to articulate it. I think the mood at the beginning of the film will make a lot of sense. If I had to express it thematically, I think what we're saying is that for Batman and Commissioner Gordon, there's a big sacrifice, a big compromise, at the end of the The Dark Knight and for that to mean something, that sacrifice has to work and Gotham has to get better in a sense.

They have to achieve something for the ending of that film — and the feeling at the end of that film — to have validity. Their sacrifice has to have meaning and it takes time to establish that and to show that, and that’s the primary reason we did that. It's a time period that is not so far ahead that we would have to do crazy makeup or anything — which I think would be distracting — but it gave them something to get their teeth into, particularly Christian in terms of [portraying] this guy who has been frozen in this moment in time with nowhere to go. He really has done an incredible job figuring out how to characterize that and express that."

Het afsluitende deel van de trilogie moet dus het hoogtepunt gaan vormen van de filmreeks van Nolan, en alles wijst erop dat Batman deze keer zijn gevaarlijkste tegenstander tot nu toe gaat ontmoeten. The Dark Knight Rises draait vanaf 25 juli 2012 in de bioscoop, en Batman zal het deze keer onder andere moeten opnemen tegen Bane (Tom Hardy) en Ra's al Ghul (Josh Pence), terwijl Anne Hathaway te zien zal zijn als Catwoman.

Het volledige interview kan je bij de LA Times lezen.