Christopher Nolan is a notoriously secretive filmmaker. Despite filming scenes of The Dark Knight Rises in the middle of city streets, no one is quite sure of what to expect from Nolan’s final Batman movie. Is Occupy Wall Street involved? Why does Catwoman’s costume look so stupid? Why is there a Catwoman in the first place? Christopher Nolan sat down with Empire Magazine and finally gave a small glimpse into what the newest Dark Knight will be all about.

Empire released some interesting tidbits on their website from Nolan and Tom Hardy, who plays the supervillain Bane. So guys, what can we expect from this movie that won’t be out for over half a year and will undoubtedly go through a myriad of changes during production and post-production?

Most surprising of all, it picks up eight years after The Dark Knight:

Nolan says, "It's really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne's story. We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after The Dark Knight. So he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state.”

Older Bruce Wayne? Not in a great state? Jeez, is Batman going to be driving the Batmobile half-a-mile to the pharmacy to pick up his gout medication? Will there be a subplot of him watching an episode of Blue Bloods? Is Lucius Fox going to design a military-grade Bat-Hoveround?

Also, Bane is mean:

Hardy gives some info on the masked evildoer: "He's brutal. Brutal. He's a big dude who's incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style. It's not about fighting. It's about carnage. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it's nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. He is a terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action."

The two previous Batman villains, R'as al Ghul and The Joker, were more cerebral, echoing the tone of the films themselves. Bane, apparently, is a bruiser. The only question is: What’s “a result-based and oriented fighting style.” Results-based? Like Tae Bo? Bane sounds terrifying. 

But be nice, because Bane was in an accident:

Costume designer Lindy Hemming explains some of Bane’s history and how that figures into his costume. "He was injured early in his story,” she says. “He's suffering from pain and needs gas to survive. He can't survive the pain without the mask. The pipes from the mask go back along his jawline and feed into the thing at his back, where there are two cannisters."

Hmm, that sounds familiar!