The Dark Knight Rises: Production Notes Released Online

Fifty pages of production notes for Christopher Nolan's upcoming Batman finale The Dark Knight Rises have been released online, and while they really just re-emphasize information that's already pretty well-known, the sheer volume of the information and the amount of rumors they seem to confirm has the Internet in a tizzy. We'll have a fuller run-down of the notes soon, including a look at some of the new information found within, but here are some of the broad strokes, compliments of The Huffington Post. The site reports that not only was that The Dark Knight Rises prologue attached to the last Mission: Impossible movie shot with next to no special effects, but that that "do-it-yourself" spirit wasn't confined to director Nolan. Anne Hathaway also did almost all of her own stunts (although they admit she never actually rode the Bat-Pod, which is probably too bad for her, since it looks like a blast). They also claim that, like in Batman Begins, both Wayne Manor and Gotham City in general are major parts of the plot, which is why it was important to shoot in New York and redesign the ol' family homestead. And, of course, The Batcave is back, too. Which we already knew from a handful of images. On the story side, the notes confirm that Batman's a bit out of shape after his eight-year hiatus, which makes Bane even more of a challenge than a brutal, steroid-sized genius already would have been. Meanwhile, John Blake is "Bruce Wayne before Batman," a lost and committed young orphan, and that Bane himself "owns the shadows." That's a problem for Batman, who likes to think he owns the night, and it's a theme that's consistent with Joker's comments in The Dark Knight that "after nightfall, the city is mine."