One of the most brilliant moves that Christopher Nolan and crew masterminded in the marketing for ‘The Dark Knight’ was a viral marketing campaign that included clues, 20+ fake websites, and culminating with custom cellphones and Joker cards in birthday cakes. The stunt had rabid bat-fans scouring all of the webpages for clues in an effort to find something… anything… to reveal what Nolan had planned in the film.
Yesterday, the viral marketing for the finale of Nolan’s bat-trilogy, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ began. First was a dossier featured on Wired that depicted a Dr. Leonid Pavel. According to the document, Dr. Pavel is a Russian scientist that specializes in nuclear power and weaponry.
A few hours later, Empire posted another scanned document. This time featuring a transcript of a conversation between an unnamed militia and what appears to be a CIA operative. The conversation has a lot of redacted material but seems to be discussing the capture of someone, presumably Dr. Pavel.
Now today, via the @thefirerises Twitter account, we get a third document. This time it’s a memo from someone within the CIA. In response to the “exfiltration of Dr. Pavel”, the CIA has given a green light to something called “Operation Early Bird”. As with the previous documents, most of this one is again redacted. What we can glean from it is the obvious references to the militia and a $3 million payment, both mentioned in the second document release.
On top of the scanned document clues, if you pay a visit to operationearlybird.com, there is a countdown clock ticking down to 1pm EST tomorrow.
What does all this mean? I have no clue, but my speculation would be that this Russian Doctor has something to do with Bane’s doomsday device.
Stay tuned to ScienceFiction.com for more Dark Knight Rises details and clues as they’re revealed. And be sure to comment below to discuss your theories on what these government documents might mean for Batman. Is it Bane, as I predict, or something else entirely?
Update: The countdown clock has run its course. To find out what it means click here.
