The most anticipated film of 2012 is certain to be Chris Nolan’s third and final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. The 41-year-old writer/director wants to go out with a bang, having shot many of the action sequences in the 65mm IMAX format. As a way of generating excitement about the IMAX release, he showed the opening seven minutes to a gathering of movie press on Thursday night in Hollywood.

The clip introduces villain Bane (Tom Hardy) in a daring mid-air plane heist that’s more James Bond than Batman. Gone are the dark colours and sombre tones, and only the masked villain reminded the crowd they were watching a comic book film.

Nolan wants people to seek the film out on IMAX screens, telling the assembled reporters the 65mm IMAX camera format was ‘far and away the best ever invented’. He added he wanted to go back to his childhood of seeing larger than life images on screens, something he struggles with and which he hopes will return the grandeur to movies that’s always ‘being chipped away in all sorts of ways’. The picture indeed fills your entire field of vision and proving as immersive as Nolan hopes for.

Those present left impressed with the visuals but concerned about sound issues that seemed to drown Bane’s masked voice out. Nobody would say whether it was the final sound mix but such reports won’t keep crowds away in July next year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011 at 5:44 am and is filed under Film, Film Features, The West Australian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.