When Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" came out a few years ago it was accompanied with (at the time at least) a groundbreaking viral marketing campaign that encouraged fans to seek out clues and piece together information based on the slightest hint or suggestion, becoming Batman-like detectives themselves in the process. Well, the viral campaign is back for next summer's "The Dark Knight Rises," and a new photo has leaked suggesting a mysterious doctor character (played by Alon Aboutboul)… but who is he?
The two pages that leaked can be found below (which first popped up on Empire and Wired), and they show the redacted files of a Dr. Leonid Pavel, a character that isn't from the comics, at least based on our fairly extensive knowledge. The first page includes phrases like "Dr. Leonard Pavel disappeared on [redacted] headed a Russian nuclear facility…" The second page is a dialogue between the doctor and a Militia/CIA Station Chief and includes dialogue like, "Once he is in your custody, I need to establish communication with him."
Based on what we've heard about the prologue attached to "Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol," (and here's where we give a potential spoiler warning), it sounds like this viral stuff could be tied into that. Supposedly in "The Dark Knight Rises" the character of Bane (Tom Hardy) is a kind of political mercenary who is injured and forced to be equipped with an apparatus that feeds him a type of poison gas to keep him alive. Our guess is that Leonid Pavel is the doctor that outfits Bane with his mask and gas tank. That or it's some kind of anagram that some nerd will unscramble to read "THE JOKER LIVES!" or some shit.
Either way the IMAX prologue to "The Dark Knight Rises" hits with "Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol" a week from Friday. We've already got our tickets (seriously, we do) – do you have yours?
