8 Little Known Nuances In Tom Hardy’s Performance That Made Nolan’s Bane Awesome

7. "What A Lovely Voice" Was Improvised

For its high number of extras and focal point in the marketing campaign, the football field destruction set piece, along with the follow on reveal of Bane's neutron bomb was a sequence we were all ready for long before we actually saw The Dark Knight Rises. And with city wide destruction accompanying the stadium destruction, boy did it deliver.

But what really stuck in our minds was a throwaway line by Bane before the chaos ensued. Although he is about to revolutionise/subjugate Gotham, he takes a moment to enjoy the rendition of the national anthem from a young Gothamite.

As I discussed before, Heath Ledger had a lot of freedom in the role of the Joker, but given the bigger, more choreographed slant to Bane's destruction it'd be expected Tom Hardy would have considerably less opportunity to improvise. Well turns out he did; that memorable musing "What a lovely voice" was created on the spur of the moment on set.

There are few other examples of improvisation, but this one more than makes up for it by defining the whole sequence.