“The Dark Knight Rises” Began Filming Last Week

With this being one of the most anticipated films for me, you'd think I would have reported it when it actually happened.  But "The Dark Knight Rises", the third (and probably FINAL) Batman movie by Christopher Nolan, began principle filming this past week. 

One thing that Nolan did an amazing job of during the lead up to "The Dark Knight" was the viral campaign including a scavenger hunt and several episodes of "Gotham Tonight" that included news stories and interviews with characters that lead up to the opening events of the film.  Looks like Nolan is already off to a big start, by releasing a promotional shot of Tom Hardy as the character "Bane."  The LA Times pointed out that Bane was an interesting choice for a villian due to the "age" of the character in the comic books.  Previous villians Joker, Two-Face, and Scarecrow all made their debuts in the 1940s and Ra's Al-Ghul was introduced in 1971.  However, Bane was introduced less than 20 years ago, in 1993, as a pivotal role in the "Nightfall" series which showed Bane breaking Batman's back and another man taking over, temporarily, as Batman.

Second unit filming began a few weeks back, with amature photography showing a pit of bright green liquid.  This lead many fans to debate if it is a vat of "Venom", the steroid that gives Bane his strenght and increased size, or a Lazarus Pit, something Ra's Al-Ghul uses for immortality.  Given than Christopher Nolan is trying to keep a realistic tone to the films and Bane being the big villian, the vat of "Venom" is the likely one. 

The picture of Tom Hardy as Bane was released on the movie's official website. 

Didn't work, did it?  Just a blank screen with audio of people cheering.  This picture can only be found by tweeting “#thefirerises” or by adding "image.html" to the end of the web address.