The one drawback with sinister-telecommunicationist-type villains is their relative lack of mobility. They have to stay close to the phone, naturally. Yeah, cell phones, I know…but cell phones don’t count. You can’t talk sinisterly into a cell phone. You need a real phone for that. Anybody, no matter how sinister they otherwise are, looks ever-just-so-slightly ridiculous talking into a cell phone, and that ruins the whole effect.
Therefore, any sinister-telecommunicationist-type villain worth their salt knows the value of staying in their control room full of sinister equipment and communicating sinisterly from there. When the villain is only a sub-villain, that goes for both directions of communication: both receiving sinister orders, as well as sinisterly communicating them on to sinister underlings. Unfortunately, if the audience is only supposed to hear the non-meaningful part of the communication, that can get a little bit tedious – but Nolan paid good (if partially fake) money for that sinisterly talking character actor, so he naturally wants him to sinisterly talk his money’s worth.
More on Monday.