Oppenheimer Director Reveals Why The Dialogue Can Be Hard To Hear In His Movies

One of the critiques of Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan's movies is that some of the dialogue can be difficult to hear at times. This issue isn't very pronounced in Oppenheimer, but many people commented that Tom Hardy's performance as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises came out muffled due to the mask that the villain wears. As it turns out, there is reason for these audio hiccups that Nolan describes as an artistic choice.

Audio captured with microphones on movie sets isn't always perfect, so actors on many film and TV productions come back for sessions of additional dialogue recordings (ADR). But Nolan doesn't ask this of his performers. Speaking to Insider, Nolan said, "I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor revoice it later."

Nolan said he admits this is an "artistic choice that some people disagree with, and that's their right." For what it's worth, Hardy's Bane character did see improvements to dialogue with editing.

ADR is used by numerous film and TV productions. In fact, only 5-10% of the original audio for The Lord of the Rings trilogy made it into the final cut, with the rest re-recorded with ADR. The Lord of the Rings dialogue editor Ray Beentjes said in an interview with Sound & Picture that ADR is a good tool for getting better-quality audio, but it can also lead to creative shortcomings.

"An actor could have delivered a stellar performance on location, but the audio would often be unusable," Beentjes said. "They would then have to spend hours in a dubbing room re-recording their lines, and due to the complexity of the production, they might be covering what was six months' worth of filming in a two-day ADR session. That often makes it very difficult to create the same mood again."

Given that context, it's understandable that some directors might push to include as much original audio as possible, even if it does lead to difficulty hearing dialogue in some scenarios.

The audio hiccups and critiques probably aren't keeping Nolan up at night. After all, Nolan's movies have collectively grossed over $5 billion worldwide, and they're also critically successful. Nolan is the only director with four movies in IMDB's top 30.