The latest trailer for director Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR), has received a lavish amount of praise since its release on Monday, but also its fair share of criticism, mostly surrounding the muffled dialogue delivered by Tom Hardy as the gas mask-wearing villain Bane. Almost immediately after the trailer debuted, rumors began popping up online that Nolan plans on enhancing or altering Hardy's voice, and THR reported that "sources close to the movie" want Nolan to "change the sound mix," but apparently Nolan has no intention of changing a thing. An anonymous "high-level exec" told THR:
Chris [Nolan} wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn't dumb things down. You've got to pedal faster to keep up.
And, the rumor that would not die — that Nolan will be introducing Batman's sidekick, Robin, in TDKR, possibly played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt — got a new boost of life thanks to not one, but two, hidden references, or "easter eggs," to the character in the new trailer.
Robin Easter Egg #1
The trailer opens with a young boy singing the National Anthem during a Gotham Rogues football game. As the camera pans across the audience, we see several fans holding up letters that spell the team's name. If you take a good look at the "R," you can see that it is designed after Robin's comic book logo.
Robin Easter Egg #2
Later in the trailer, Bane detonates some sort of device that causes a giant sinkhole to develop in the middle of the field. The one player on the field who doesn't fall into the hole turns around and we see that the name on his jersey is "Ward." As any good Batman fan knows, Burt Ward is the actor who played Robin for years on TV and in the 1966 Batman movie opposite Adam West as Batman.
