IGN was privileged to visit the Pittsburgh set of The Dark Knight Rises one relentlessly hot and humid day last summer. This is Part 1 of 2 of what we saw filmed that day, and of our chats with the cast and filmmakers behind Christopher Nolan's swan song to the Batman film franchise he rebooted and reinvigorated back in 2005.

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Be advised that there areahead ...The sequence we witnessed being filmed that sweltering August day at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field was the much talked-about destruction of the Gotham Rogues' football field during a game against the Rapid City Monuments. It's been a high point in the Dark Knight Rises trailers so far, and was achieved almost entirely practically with pyrotechnics and a raised, faux surface laid out over the real field to allow for explosions and pits for the "players" to fall into. The home team was played by a combination of stunt men and real-life Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers' then-wide receiver Hines Ward even rode around the field on a Tumbler during a break in filming, and is the receiver seen in the trailer scoring a touchdown as the field explodes behind him.Ward's touchdown run was filmed multiple times by Nolan and his crew and shot using a giant IMAX camera. But the exploding football field and touchdown wasn't the only cool stuff shot that day. We also saw Bane (Tom Hardy) and his mercenaries storm the stadium, keeping the fans at bay with machine guns and Tumblers as Bane strode out onto the field to address the crowd. This is his introduction to Gotham City where he announces his agenda. As the latest TV spots have revealed, he declares himself to be Gotham's reckoning.But Bane did far more than just talk to the crowd. (Again, there's a big ol'coming next so skip ahead if you don't want to know! ... Still here? OK, you've been duly warned.) Bane's henchmen rolled out some sort of circular device onto the field for the crowd. The nature of this globe-like weapon wasn't exactly clear to us, but the visiting journalists speculated that it was probably some kind of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon. Not content with just showing off his doomsday device to the crowd, Bane also hauled out a supporting character (whose identity we won't reveal) and executed them with his bare hands in front of the shocked masses.The first person we interviewed was the film's producer (and Chris Nolan's wife) Emma Thomas. Here's what she had to say about making Dark Knight Rises:"We didn’t want to just be repeating the same old thing. I don’t think anyone would want to see the same old thing. It wouldn’t be fun for us to tell the same old story. And visually, I think the same thing applies to that. It’s meant to be winter in Gotham, so that right there is going to lend a whole different look to the film. So far, we have shot rather more in the daylight than we did on The Dark Knight."One of the biggest reasons we came (to Pittsburgh) was that Chicago -- we had a fantastic time there and we loved it, but we literally have shot every inch of that city. Like I said, we don’t want to be retreading old territory whether that be visually or in terms of the storyline. We want this to be a standalone movie. This just doesn’t feel like anything that anyone’s seen before. And Gotham is meant to be a massive metropolis. It’s meant to be a huge city. I think we felt if we went back to Chicago, we would be limiting the scope. We just wanted to make it feel massive."I think we’ve retained what works for this universe [of the comics' Bane] and for our world, but he’s definitely recognizable as, you know, the elements. Then there are some things that we’ve changed just because I think they wouldn’t have fit into Chris Nolan’s version of the world."I think that’s one of the interesting things about Bane is the choices. We were never going to revisit the Joker. We didn’t want to be trying to chase that. It’s fun to have a very different sort of villain in this and different sort of challenge for Batman to meet, a much more physical -- it’s a much more even match in some ways in a physical sense. It’s just that you don’t want to do the same thing again."I don’t want to sound like it’s all about brawn. He’s definitely a smart guy. We are definitely touching on that. There’s no doubt. And I think that’s why it is a really interesting match for Batman after the Joker, who was just purely about chaos and playing with people. Bane has a plan.""Chris [Nolan] could have chosen not to do it, but he had always talked about this as being a trilogy. I think it was the challenge of the fact that an awful lot of movies fail on third one... with some exceptions. But most of the time, that’s the real tricky one to pull off. And I think he really likes the challenge of that."The thing is, (Bruce Wayne’s) still that child basically. The one thing that I did notice there’s an awful lot of in the graphic novels, which we’ve played with a little bit, is this whole notion of him genuinely being a playboy. But it’s just what we’ve done which is a little bit like he sort of performs that, but his heart’s not really in it. And the eternal problem that Alfred has is watching this guy who has no life. [Bruce] has put his entire life on hold because he’s got such a fierceness in his mind, in his emotions, that he just will not forget the pain of losing his parents. With most people, it’s like time heals all wounds, but I think with him it’s like, no no no no no, he doesn’t want to forget it. He wants to maintain that anger that he felt at that injustice, but he wants to present this very vacuous, soulless persona to Gotham so that no one will suspect him. They’ll just think he’s a spoiled bastard. But consequently, in his most intimate moments, he has Alfred, he’s got Rachel, and... there’s not a whole lot there because it’s complete arrested development. You know, and the recognition that at some point, he’s gotta start living. He’s seriously behind in terms of life and enjoyment of life. That’s all been sacrificed. And hopefully at some point it’s Alfred’s wish that he’ll start to live again. Of course, his tragedy has defined him, but to a degree where he sacrificed everything that most people consider worth living for in life. He’s going to have to relearn that far, far too late -- embarrassingly late -- in life."It’s a real good cast. I worked with Marion [Cotillard] really briefly in Public Enemies, and she’s a wonderful, versatile actress. So far, the work’s been really great with her. With Anne, likewise, I think she’s doing something really different than most people probably would have seen her do before. And Tom, who I’ve been working with mostly the last few weeks-- he’s a real fascinating actor. He’s going to be creating some wonderful characters over his career, and he’s really doing so with this. He’s kind of just gleeful coming in to work every day. He’s got a great character that he can chew the scenery with in a good way. He’s the real deal. I’m very impressed with him. I’m very impressed with all the cast in this one."Obviously, I have no clue about what an audience is going to think about the movie. Thank God I’ve got someone like Chris who’s really great at representing the audience for us on the set. For me, I love the character so much, you’d probably get a very bizarre Batman movie where people are going, 'What the hell? Why are we delving so much into his psyche here?' But he is a very fascinating character, and then Chris just has to tell me the points at which it’s just tedious and boring and he doesn’t want to see what I’m doing. It’s great having someone at the helm who-- he’s remarkably confident at just going with his gut and not desiring any safety net or anything to fall back on. There’s a number of times where I say to him, 'You sure you don’t want me to give you a few other variants?' and I can do this one. 'What if later down the track, you choose to change this part of the story?' Well, in that case, we need to change the domino effect. 'Well, I can give you three or four different ways I can play it.' 'No, no, no. That’s the exact thing that I need.' He’s very, very firm with it. But he is a very fascinating character, and honestly, I think there’s probably an awful lot more stories that could be told. I quite like the idea of him getting older, and 'can he do it quite as much anymore?' But I feel like you’ve gotta leave when the going’s good, and this is when Chris wants to wrap it up. And it’s the right time."Yeah, of course I will [miss being Batman]. Yeah. Definitely. For all the discomfort and the heat and the sweat and headaches and everything for it, when you sit back and watch the movie at that end of the day, you go, 'That’s f***ing cool.' So, I will miss that."It was well over 100 degrees and brutally humid on this "wintry" day in Gotham City when Bane, his face masked and garbed in a heavy coat, swaggered onto the field at Gotham Stadium like a conqueror. Hardy called his heavy costume "very, very, very hot. We're all getting very hot. You think about the (troops) in Afghanistan and Baghdad, and you think about what they have to wear, well then it's actually not that bad, is it? But it is hot. It's hard to breathe."Hardy, who admitted he "had no immediate knowledge of the world of Batman at all" when he was cast as Bane, said his previous stint with another beloved genre property helped him know what to expect from becoming part of the Dark Knight franchise:"Working on (Star Trek: Nemesis) really opened me up. I was a very young boy. I think I had only been working nine months when I got Star Trek, and it was huge. It was very overwhelming. So that opened my eyes a bit at an early age, kind of how not be frightened when walking into a responsibility of something like that. Like a Batman, or a Hobbit, or whatever it is. These characters belong to a large group of people who love them. And it's a huge responsibility to deliver something important to them. So Star Trek was a stepping stone towards that, this journey. I'm incredibly grateful to be playing the villain in a world which, if I really thought to hard about what I was doing, I would get very nervous about the size and the magnitude of the importance and responsibility of being a villain in the world of Batman.""The first thing I have to say is what an honor. It’s funny for me because when I got my start, I kind of got my big break in a film called The Princess Diaries. During the press for that, everyone asked me, 'Did you always want to be a princess growing up?' And the truth was no, I wanted to be Catwoman. And I think a lot of young women feel that way, probably a lot of women in general. The fact that I’m actually her is such a dream come true. It’s such a pinch-me moment, and the fact that I am Catwoman in Chris Nolan’s Gotham to Christian Bale’s Batman is unbelievably cool.""I love Catwoman’s sense of humor. I love how sly she is. I love the way she-- to use a cat metaphor-- she walks the fence, and you don’t know which side she’s going to come down on. She’s just totally independent. And let’s face it, she’s badass."Each Catwoman is specific to the Gotham City that she lives in and the director that helps shape her. So it’s hard to kind of have a favorite, and I’m not just being political. It’s hard to have a favorite because each one is so specific. You look back at the history of the comics, and Catwoman gets reinvented every 10 to 15 years anyway. You can have preferences, but it’s more the character I think for me."I grew up with all of them so I was well acquainted with the character. As I mentioned, she’s one of my favorite characters in the comic book world. So I didn’t go back to any of the other ones because I’m in Chris’s Gotham City. For me, it didn’t make a lot of sense to-- the extraordinary performance that Michelle Pfeiffer gave, that was Tim Burton’s Gotham. So for me, that didn’t make a lot of sense [to emulate]."I couldn’t feel more privileged to walk on the set every day. I’m the most annoying, chipper person because every day I walk on, and I just want to do backflips at happy I am to be here. I would have played Street Cop #3 if it meant getting to work with Chris Nolan, and I get to play Catwoman. So if that’s the case, then I hope I don’t let him down."

Jim Vejvoda is the Executive Editor of IGN Movies. Follow him on on Twitter and IGN