First the Avengers box set release gets pushed back to spring, and now it's been confirmed by IndieWire that there will be little if any extra footage for the DVD release of Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises." This is a tremendous disappointment, as long before the movie released in theatres, fan sites were abuzz with the fact that Nolan had to trim about 40 minutes from the film. It was hoped that extra 40 minutes of footage would find its way onto a DVD eventually.
Personally, I was quite hopeful for some of the cut footage to flesh out Bane a bit more. Shortly after the film's premiere, costume designer Lindy Hemming confirmed that there was a "considerable amount" of Bane's origin that had been cut from the final version. Says Hemming:
"He has this scar from the back injury. Even if he hasn't got the bulletproof vest on, he still has to wear the waist belt and the braces. In that scene in the prison, where he's learning to fight the same way Batman learned to fight, he's wearing an early version of his waist belt. It's showing support, but it's not the finished one he eventually wears. He's also wearing an early version of his gas mask, all glued together....There's a whole early section for Tom Hardy where he's fighting and being taunted by people. He's got chains on him, and he's standing on a wooden thing while people are attacking him. And in that scene, he's wearing a much more ragged, primitive version of the mask. There was another section that showed you why he had the mask and where it came from."
Cripes, if we can't even get that, than I guess there's really no hope for Tom Hardy to do film commentary while wearing the Bane mask.
Now, it's argued that maybe we should've seen this coming, as Nolan is known for not including deleted scenes or extra footage on the DVD of his movies. He previously told MTV::
"I tend to try and weed things out on paper because it's crazy expensive to shoot things that aren't going to be in the film. It also takes up a lot of time and energy. Pretty much with all my films, there are very few deleted scenes, which always disappoints the DVD crowd."
Maybe there's still hope for a DVD box set of all three of Nolan's Batman movies down the road.
"The Dark Knight Rises" is estimated to release on DVD this December.
