Christopher Nolan kicks off The Dark Knight Rises with a thrilling action sequence filmed with an impressive amount of practical effects. By the conclusion of his Dark Knight trilogy, Nolan was well established as one of the best directors around with a preference for practical stunts when possible. The 2012 DC movie starring Christian Bale as Batman pitted the Dark Knight against a physical opponent, Bane (Tom Hardy). While this allowed The Dark Knight Rises to include some hard-hitting fights between them, the most impressive set-piece came with Bane's introduction.
Nolan begins The Dark Knight Rises with an intense action scene based around Bane's capture. The supervillain was brought onto a plane for transport by the CIA, and other characters quickly discovered this was part of Bane's plan. A group of mercenaries hired by Bane attacked the plane from above, as four of them propel down and attach cabling from their plane to the CIA's. This causes the CIA plane to tip nose down and begin to break apart. Shootouts and fistfights break out inside the CIA plane as this all happens, but Bane's mercenaries blow a hole in the tail of the plane for a safe escape. And while plenty of other blockbusters would've done portions of this scene with CGI, Nolan made Bane's hijack in The Dark Knight Rises practically.
To film Bane's plane hijack practically, Nolan reportedly spent a few days filming the stunt in Scotland using a South African EMB-110 for the CIA's plane and a Lockheed C130 Hercules for that of Bane's mercenaries. The stunt took quite a lot of time to rehearse and figure out the practical mechanics. When it came time to destroy the CIA's plane, Nolan replaced the real plane with a prop version. The actual stuntman had to drop down to the prop to capture the moments when the CIA plane is being destroyed. The Lockheed C130 Hercules towed the prop glider during this time, with Nolan allowed to actually drop the prop plane into the Cairngorm Mountains.
Practically filming the scenes of the planes flying and the beginning of the raid were possible for Nolan, but he could truly capture everything in the real environment. The portions of The Dark Knight Rises plane scene that took place inside the aircraft were done using a simulator. This was built in England and was an extension of the world-bending practical stunts Nolan pulled off in Inception two years prior. The simulator enabled Nolan to control the environment to shake and rotate the plane with the actors and stuntmen inside.
While The Dark Knight Rises uses CGI for other action scenes, the practicality of Bane's plane scene is one of many reasons it is so memorable. And while Nolan gets much of the credit for accomplishing Bane's plane hijack and The Dark Knight Rises' other stunts, some other important people contributed to their success. Nolan's longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister accommodated the director's desire to shoot as much of the action as possible, while Tom Struthers was the stunt coordinator who oversaw the challenging sequences.