At 164 minutes, I’m surprised anything was cut from The Dark Knight Rises, but it looks like at least a couple scenes were left on the cutting room floor.  In an interview with GQ, costume designer Lindy Hemming talks about a flashback sequence involving Bane (Tom Hardy).  Hemming hasn’t seen the finished film, so she assumed the scene had made the final cut.  The audience never learns much about Bane other than the mask is a breathing device that stops him from being in incredible pain, and also a spoiler that I won’t reveal here.

Hit the jump for more details on the deleted scene.

As the costume designer of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and now  The Dark Knight Rises (along with dozens of other movies and TV shows) Lindy Hemming has mastered the art of making costumed vigilantes look real.  In the final Christopher Nolan Batman movie, Hemming had to design two major new characters: Catwoman and Bane.  During a group interview on the Pittsburgh set last summer, Hemming revealed her decision making process on the practical costumes and so much more.  Here’s a few of the highlights:

• The Batman suit has not changed between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
• The Catwoman suit functions a bit like a female version of the Batman Suit: technology built into the suit itself for her needs.  They wanted to make the suit a function sort of suit for burglary, so they stayed away from making it too shiny or binding.
• The heels in the Catwoman suit can be used as weapons.  The ears in Catwoman’s suit have a specific function and purpose that works with the technology of her suit. When they are on top of her head they look like ears, but they drop down over her face to become goggles.  Catwoman’s goggles function as both night vision goggles and a jeweler’s loupe.
• They modeled the Bane costume with nods towards the wrestling costume that exists in the comics, but centered it on the realistically grounded back-story that exists in the Nolan universe.
• The Bane costume also leans heavily on the fact that it’s a less technological aspect of creation, unlike the Batman suit. It has a slightly clunky aspect of it as if parts of it were being made along the way during his travels.  The mask dispenses gas that Bane needs to survive.
• Bane’s mask was built to express a more menacing animalistic and vicious element to the character; to give the audience a feeling of a snarling and dangerous aspect.
• Chris Nolan is very involved in the designing of the costumes.

Hit the jump for more.

In early August of last year, I got to visit the set of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises in Pittsburgh.  I’ve waited a long time to write those words.  At the time of the visit, the embargo/NDA was so severe that Warner Bros. wouldn’t allow us to tweet or post on Facebook that we were even flying into the city!  But with Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film hitting theaters July 20th, the studio has been amping up their promotional campaign, and they’re finally allowing the sites that were on set to say we were there.  In addition, they’ve provided us with four awesome billboards/posters that feature Bane, Catwoman, and Batman.  Hit the jump to check them out and to learn more about my set visit.