Bane…
Bane?
Bane?!
Had this all just been another in a long line of The Dark Knight Rises rumors I would have ruled it out as the most ridiculous bit of guesswork yet.
Catwoman makes sense, as did all of the Riddler and Black Mask talk that had been floating around.
But Bane?!
The same Bane in the Mexican wrestling mask who does drugs that make him Hulk out and stuff Bane?
My first thought was “Holy, I hope not Batman!”
Please, let it just be another rumor or before we know it we’re going to find Christopher Nolan’s wonderful, real world take on Batman full of Bat-Mites, Killer Crocs and California Governors getting another crack at Mr. Freeze!
But this time the rumor comes right down from the top.
Nolan says its Bane and Catwoman, played by Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway respectively.
Let’s get one thing straight; it is not the casting I was so worried about.
I’m not even going to address that since I don’t know Hardy outside of his impeccable Tom Berenger impressions in Inception.
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| That’s Hardy on the left and Berenger on the right, folks |
For me it was all about the choice in the Bane character, but my initial surprise/shock/fear/fanboy rage began to subside after I stopped and allowed myself to actually think about it.
For starters, Nolan has given the comic community no reason to doubt his madness.
The man rebooted the Batman franchise and instead of kicking it off with The Joker, Penguin or any other “safe” villains he throws Ra’s al Ghul at us straight out the gate. Granted a noticeably less fantastic al Ghul—his immortality and the Lazerus Pits are never addressed or even referenced—but still, not exactly the first character a lot of people think of when they hear “Batman villain.”
Beyond Nolan’s proven track record there is the fact that so far each of his Batman films has pitted the Dark Knight against two villains that both fit into very distinct roles that are important to who and what Batman is.
We will call these roles “The Fallen Peer” (TFP) and “The Twisted Mirror Image” (TMI).
In the TFP roles we had Ra’s al Ghul and Harvey Dent/Two-Face.
Both were men with values and beliefs not at all too different from those held by Bruce Wayne/Batman. Ra’s and Bruce both understood and agreed that the only way to effectively battle society’s less desirable was to become something it feared. Where they differed was on their approach. While Bruce Wayne sought to bring criminals to justice, al Ghul was willing to put all of Gotham on trial. He saw society as a whole as being guilty. Wayne believed there to still be some good worth fighting for.
Similarly, Harvey Dent was a beacon of hope, “The best of us” as Bats told him during the Mexican Stand-off at the end of The Dark Knight.
Dent, now Two-Face, had been broken, forced off of his righteous path to become a desperate man looking for revenge and justice by any means necessary, including murder, a line Wayne would never cross. Again, what they both seek, or at least what they started off having in common, was to fix what was wrong with the world.
This is the role I can see Catwoman fitting into.
No longer a flat-out villain, she’s taken on a more morally ambiguous role over the last couple of decades.
She’s Batman’s adversary, occasional ally and the perpetual Diane Chambers to his Sam Malone. It is her grey moral stance that will make her an interesting addition to the films, especially given Batman’s choice to assume the responsibility for Dent’s death so as to preserve his public image and begin a life as a hunted man.
There’s no doubt that their unorthodox approaches to life as outlaws will make for a good time at the movies.
But what about the TMI-factor?
Batman Begins had Scarecrow, who like Wayne used fear as a weapon.
The Dark Knight showed us a Joker who openly taunted Batman with the fact that neither man is all that different and that it wouldn’t take much for Batman to become just another freak in a mask, which he proved by breaking Dent. Scarecrow and Joker are the stark, nightmarish reflections of the life Wayne has chosen. And while I can’t imagine him being as psychologically driven, Bane just might follow in their footsteps. Again, Batman is an outlaw. The city has turned on him and as far as everyone who isn’t Alfred or Commissioner Gordon is concerned, there is no difference between him and a menace like Bane.
Both are just a couple of freaks.
What Bane really brings to the table is a villain who is an actual physical threat to Batman.
Toe-to-toe, no weapons allowed, none of the villains in Nolan’s films were much of a threat. At best, al Ghul gave him an equal fight. But Bane can crush him, as shown when he broke Batman’s spine over his knee in the 90s.
Bane will push Batman to the very limits of his own physical capabilities, the same way the Batman absolutely runs house on the petty thugs and gangsters he’s so used to slapping up and down Gotham’s streets. Like Scarecrow and The Joker, Bane will give Batman a taste of his own medicine.
So Bane?
I’m not psyched about it, but Nolan has done wonders for Batman, not the least of which includes washing the taste of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin from out collective mouths. If stuck choosing between Bane at the hands of a competent filmmaker or the Riddler at the hands of a spandex clad Jim Carrey, well, I don’t think we need bother riddling Batman with that one.
Nolan is no Schumacher, so who knows.
