Empire’s Brand New Dark Knight Rises Pictures

Empire Magazine’s The Dark Knight Rises issue is imminent, and while SuperHeroHype has some very interesting scans, the Magazine itself is teasing content from it’s cover article. Here’s what Tom Hardy has to say about Bane:

He’s brutal. 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.

Even more revealingly to fans, costume designer Lindy Hemming explains Bane’s mask and, unless we’re very much mistaken, the role that Venom, Bane’s high-powered steriod, will or won’t have in the movie:

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 canisters.

For an extra dose of even more plot thickening agents, check out this picture of Bane brandishing a picture of Harvey Dent.

Additional relevant info from the Empire preview is that Christopher Nolan has confirmed that the “first six, seven minutes of the film” will run in select IMAX theaters on December 21st. This would coincide with the release date of The Adventures of Tintin, as well as the IMAX run of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Nolan says the clip will serve as “an introduction to Bane.”

(pics via SuperHeroHype, quotes via Empire.)