"Sometimes, when I get nervous, I put my fingers into my armpits like this, and then I smell 'em like this...."

I thought I was done with the Dark Knight Rises stuff this morning, and that was fine by me, because discussing the miniscule tidbits of a movie that doesn’t come out until next July kind of bores me to tears, but apparently there’s more. ComingSoon has the extra-special “subscribers-only” pictures, and some steamy hot plot-nuggets to pinch into your eager mouths (yes, grandma, that was scat porn imagery). I wouldn’t consider this a “spoiler” so much as boring hype, but I’ll put it after the jump just in case.

On the time frame:

In the article, Nolan reveals that the story picks up eight years after The Dark Knight. “It’s really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne’s story. We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after ‘The Dark Knight.’ So he’s an older Bruce Wayne; he’s not in a great state. With Bane, we’re looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn’t had before. With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we’re testing Batman both physically as well as mentally.”

(*shrug*)

On the villain:

Tom Hardy said that Bane is “brutal. He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style. It’s not about fighting. It’s about carnage. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. He is a terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action.”

A “result-based fighting style.” As opposed to, I guess, a just-for-looks fighting style? A “terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action.” As opposed to… solely a mind-terrorist, I guess? Man, that is the most long-winded, meaningless way to say “GRRR, PUNCHING!” I’ve ever heard. If Tom Hardy came up with that himself, he could have a job at Tapout, or naming new energy drink flavors.

On Bane’s mask:

Costume designer Lindy Hemming also talked about Bane’s mask in the film. “He was injured early in his story. He’s suffering from pain and needs gas to survive. He can’t survive the pain without the mask. The pipes from the mask go back along his jawline and feed into the thing at his back, where there are two cannisters.”

I wish the villain was James Franco, and he wore a specially-designed mask that allowed him to breathe his own farts while he dicknosed everyone. A superhero for us Ivy League grads. “Suck poetry, prole!”

[a couple more pictures over at ComingSoon]