Poll: The Dark Knight Rises - Was Bane a good villain?

[Zhukov]

Meh.

He looked okay (although the mouth thingy was stupid), had a strong presence and I actually liked his voice.

However, big muscles, an interesting voice and a bit of plastic on your gob does not make an interesting villain. And that's all he had.

 

[Lunar Templar]

i liked him, is some ways, more then The Joker.

the sudden 'oh and here's Talia' twist was kinda tacked on feeling really

 

[Mithcha]

Knowing virtually nothing about the Batman mythos, I thought he was a decent film villain. Don't really have the knowledge to judge how good a batman villain he was though.

Though to be honest I was paying more attention to Catwoman then either Bane or mr gravel voice, though that may have been the suit.

 

[TheCommanders]

A bit of trivia if anyone is interested. I went to the midnight screening of the Dark Knight Rises, and then went back a week or two later to see it again with a few friends. I could have sworn that they had increased the volume on Bane's voice between those two viewings. I talked to a friend who worked at the theater and apparently, the version that critics had screened had not had Bane's voice nearly as loud as in the version most people saw, and many critics complained that they couldn't hear/understand him. So for the final release, the volume was cranked up on his voice. Apparently, however, not all of the theaters got the new version in time for the midnight release, so a few people may have seen the version the critics did if you went on opening night. You would then understand why they turned up the volume on his voice. Before they did, it was very hard to understand, especially in a theater.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

It was a very very shakey film. Hardy and Hathaway saved it from becoming total shit.
Bane was good until his plan was revealed, then he was ok, then he became a stooge.

The problem is that TDKR was lacking so much overall, that it actually brought down the best big-budget media depiction of Bane that there's been.

 

[Ironbat92]

Was he as good as the Joker? No, but he was a damn good one still. He was intimidating, with the physique to back it up, He was intelligent, Managing to to break Batman both Physically and Mentally, and Everything he said was diabolically intelligent, which I understood. Sure, he wasn't the deepest character of the villains, but still a great one none the less.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Bane is like Portal 2.

If they stood on their own, they would be incredible, landmark things.

Unfortunately, both have the position of having to be compared to a predecessor.

In Bane's case, he has to be compared to the fucking juggernaut that was Heath Ledger's Joker.

So yes. Bane was fantastic.

 

[Zen Bard]

When my wife watched "The Dark Knight Rises", she asked if they got Sean Connery to do Bane's voice. And she was serious!

HA!

I agree with everyone else (first time for everything, I guess). I really liked the depiction of Bane right up until the big "Talia reveal".

Shame really. From the very first scene, the film set him up to be exactly the opposite of just a big, dumb thug. And in some ways, the fact he was a calculating, cultured intellectual made him more frightening than The Joker because he knew exactly what the consequences of his actions were.

I also don't understand why they chose such a stupid explanation for his mask! They could still have incorporated Venom as some sort of addictive steroid and made a social commentary on performance enhancing drugs.

Because we all know how much Nolan just hates social commentary...

 

[babinro]

No.

It really didn't feel like I was watching Bane as a character...neither did Catwoman for that matter. Dark Knight Rises had a great opening to introduce Bane, but he never held that level of interest afterwards.

Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Jim Carrey, Michell Pfeiffer and even Danny Devito all felt right in their villain roles.

As for Bane, I'll stick with the Batman TAS version.

 

[NicotineStainedSoul]

His motivations were all over the place and his (well Talia's) plan was retarded. I get she wanted batman to suffer but the plan was so stupidly complicated, wouldn't it have been enough to hurt Bruce by just blowing up Gotham? why release all these prisoners, what was the point of it all? I mean they were going to blow up Gotham no matter what.
They build Bane up throughout the entire film but he honestly fails to deliver, just a puppet.
And....where did Bane get all these guys who were all willing to die in this suicide mission? I mean there wasn't any evacuation plans for his men for when the bomb was due to go off, so the entire organisation would have been wiped out in this one mission, a mission to make Bruce Wayne cry (if the plan was deeper than this correct me because I failed to see it).

His voice didn't bug me too much but I honestly couldn't understand him at some points.

also...if Bane couldn't take off that mask without being in debilitating agony, how the hell did he eat or drink?

Whole film was pretty disappointing for me. stupid villains, stupid twist, stupid ticking clock, and spending half the film watching Bruce Wayne dangling helplessly from a rope.

 

[WolfThomas]

The only problem I have is the reason for the Mask. It doesn't really make sense to have anesthetic used like that. And while I get that Venom as pretty much a super soldier serum is a bit far fetched, the first movie had blue flowers that made people hallucinate their fears, why couldn't the League of shadows have something that enhanced him?

 

[Saladfork]

I kind of got the impression that Talia was mostly just the idea man (woman, whatever) and Bane was the one who came up with the actual plan. At the end, for example, when Talia tells Bane not to kill Batman, Bane waits until she leaves and then goes to kill him anyway, showing that he has more initiative than you'd see from a blindly loyal minion, and is what ultimately made Bane a better choice for the role than, say, Killer Croc.

I did think it was kinda bullshit how Catwoman just owns him, but I suppose I don't really know what else they could've done with him without Batman violating his 'thou shalt not kill' rule.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

HAnd....where did Bane get all these guys who were all willing to die in this suicide mission? I mean there wasn't any evacuation plans for his men for when the bomb was due to go off, so the entire organisation would have been wiped out in this one mission, a mission to make Bruce Wayne cry (if the plan was deeper than this correct me because I failed to see it).

Bane's henchmen were the remnants of the League of Shadows, the fanatical ninjas who trained Batman in the first movie. Their goal throughout history had been to fight crime by periodically purging governments and cities they deemed "corrupt." They'd long ago decided that Gotham was corrupt beyond saving; that's why they tried to destroy it in the first film. This time, they just decided to use a nuke instead of a fear toxin. They waited six months to do it as punishment for Batman, who had stopped Ra's al-Ghul in the first film.

In fact, the League of Shadows had tried to destroy Gotham three times, and the whole thing makes total sense when you look at all three films. Ra's mentions in Begins that the League was responsible for Gotham's economic depression two decades before the series even started, and that they only turned to the fear toxin because that didn't work. It's only after Batman foils that plan and kills Ra's that they get very direct and try to nuke it. But the League's objective all along had always been to ruin Gotham - they targeted Batman both because he could stop them, and because Talia wanted revenge.

It's really all very simple!

also...if Bane couldn't take off that mask without being in debilitating agony, how the hell did he eat or drink?

I don't know, maybe there's a hole. Maybe he just does a shitload of drugs before sitting down to eat.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Anything is a downgrade from Heath Ledger's joker.. but the Tom Hardy Bane was still awesome: the characterization, the new twist to make the character seem actually possible not just believeable, and Tom Hardy acting. It was all done just right

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The only problem I have is the reason for the Mask. It doesn't really make sense to have anesthetic used like that. And while I get that Venom as pretty much a super soldier serum is a bit far fetched, the first movie had blue flowers that made people hallucinate their fears, why couldn't the League of shadows have something that enhanced him?

The mask actually has the same basic function as the Venom did; it serves both as an explanation for why Bane is strong enough to beat Batman one-on-one (he feels no pain), and as a weak point that Batman can eventually exploit to defeat him. Having it be an anaesthetic mask instead of a Venom dispenser didn't actually change anything.

If you ask me, the problem Nolan had was with the mask in the first place. You can't have a guy run around in a luchadore mask in a realistic crime drama! It's too gimmicky. Their reasoning probably went:

1. Let's not do a luchadore mask; what if it's a gas mask?
2. ooh! What if the gas mask dispenses Venom?
3. Wait, Venom is probably too unrealistic. What if he's suffered terrible wounds and the mask dispenses anaesthetic?

Remember, to most people, steroids don't wear off in a span of seconds, or require constant dosage. An anaesthetic that wears off that quickly, however, is a little more believable.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

[quote/]I'm not sure that's really a good point against him. After all, at the end of the day Darth Vader was 'essentially an elite mook' to Emperor Palpatine, and yet Vader's widely considered one of the most iconic villains of all time. I think this case is really more a symptom of Talia seeming lackluster in comparison to Bane, which brings both of them down a peg. Using the Star Wars example again, Vader was shown to serve the Emperor, yes, but his own competence coupled with the Palapatine's apparently effortless evil created a strong dynamic between the two which worked to both of their advantage. Conversely, whereas Bane seemed threatening, Talia seemed...well, I want to say opportunistic at best. We were more told that she was a villain than we were shown it, and saw little evidence of the history we were told about her. Honestly, I really can't help but feel that Bane's 'elite mook' status would have worked out a lot better if his boss was revealed to be a still living (or ressurected, given his typical characterization) Ra's Al Ghul.[/quote]

Or maybe have Talia revealed a lot earlier to be the villain, since everyone knew Marion Cotillard was going to be Talia the moment she was cast. That way you won't confuse people who don't know who the character is and think it's a cheap twist, and annoy the fans that are wondering why the movie is taking its time saying it's her. Then she can go on doing villainy things and can go into more detail why she's doing what she's doing instead of giving an exposition dump in the last few minutes.

 

[Pyramid Head]

It's not that i didn't prefer movie Bane to comic Bane, but really Bane was kind of boring and i saw the plot twist that he was a toady for someone else dozens of miles away.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Bane was a bad villain. He had a good concept behind him but they had to force him into a certain connection that he doesn't really benefit from just to tie it all back to Batman's old rivals and make a twist ending. Screw that - he could have been grand on his own. A man such as himself that riles up the lower classes that had been stomped on for years, literally rising up from the sewers to take up what is rightfully theirs and bring down the aristocracy and overreaching hand of the "law" Batman represents... But nope, instead they used a motherfucking bomb, cut this whole idea and essentially made Bane into someone that fooled all of those people for petty revenge.

Bad Villain. I do not approve.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

On reflection I consider him to be the worst of all the Nolan villains. That's still leagues better than the average, and he is probably the best version of Bane ever seen outside of a comic book (yeah I was scared of his Animated series incarnation when I was like 8, but now he just looks goofy). Naturally many people felt that his thunder was stolen by the reveal at the end, but I don't feel like it diminishes his accomplishments that much. He was still born in the darkness of the pit, still trained by the same mentor, still completely fanatical about his cause, still broke the Bat, and still one of the heirs to the League of Shadows. Every single word he says in the sewers and in front of Blackgate is instantly memorable.

What I didn't like so much was how cliched his method turned out to be- a nuclear bomb as leverage. Yay innovation! In general under him the League of Shadows seems to have become far more crude and generically terrorist-y than ever before, merely carrying out their fallen master's final intent only because that's what he was trying to do before he died, never mind his original reasons for doing so. I suppose that could be a metaphor for his entire representation as a parallel to Batman like the rest of his rogues- stuck in the past wearing that scary dark mask until the day he dies because he can't let go of the one he loved and move on. What Bruce felt for Rachel, Bane felt for Talia, and he would follow her to the ends of the earth regardless of the merit of her actions. Far away from your typical muscled bruiser, as if the strange contrast between his gentle voice and brutal actions didn't convince you of that already. Actually that would make a fun AU story, if Rachel was actually as evil as Talia was ...

I read one movie review that loved him, painting him as a 'dark messiah' trying to replace Batman. Wouldn't go that far, but he certainly gave some hints of that with the way he presented himself as a champion of the poor and downtrodden while actually leading them to their ultimate destruction.