A Break From Talking About Music... Let's Talk Batman Instead

I may be a couple of weeks late with this, seeing as the buzz from the announcement Tom Hardy (Inception) will be playing Bane in next year's The Dark Knight Rises is already dying down, but I thought I'd talk a bit about the character of Bane. Fans of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies that don't read the comics may have felt a sense of trepidation at the announcement, as - unlike The Scarecrow, The Joker and Two-Face - Bane is a relatively unknown character outside of the comics. He made appearances in a couple of episodes of the excellent Batman: The Animated Series, the only other portrayal of the character was in the awful Batman & Robin, in which he was a mindless mutant with a tiny vocabulary following Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy around and doing all of her dirty work.
When you consider this awful representation of the character, it's easy to understand why people wouldn't be particularly excited about the character appearing in the sequel to a movie that featured Heath Ledger's Joker. However, I'm confident that Christopher and Jonathan Nolan know what they're doing, and will bring more of the comics into their version of the character.

Bane first appeared in the Batman comics in 1993, a prisoner in a South American prison - forced to carry out his father's sentence after his father escapes. Within the walls of the prison, Bane becomes obsessed with learning and bodybuilding, seeking an education from fellow inmates. With his mixture of brains and brawn, he eventually becomes the self-appointed "king of Pena Dura prison".

Eventually, the prison controllers force Bane to take part in an experiment with the brand new drug known as Venom. Venom is basically a fast-acting super-steroid that greatly increases his size and pysical strength. The drawback however, is that Venom is incredibly addictive, and he requires a new dose every twelve hours (fed to him via tubes that pump the drug directly into his brain). After these experiments, Bane and a few other inmates escape and make their way to Gotham City.

The reason for the trip to Gotham is simple. In prison, Bane had heard tales of the city and its mysterious protector known only as Batman. Plagued with nightmares involving bats since childhood, he has concluded that the bat in his dreams are a literal representation of Batman, and recognises that Batman holds the same position in Gotham as he did in the prison. As such, he sets about making his plans to usurp Batman's throne and gain control of Gotham City.

The first stage of his plans involves staging a full frontal assault on Arkham Asylum, freeing all of the inmates. This begins the first major Batman storyline I ever read... Knightfall. With the likes of the Joker, the Scarecrow, Victor Zsasz, etc. embarking on a crime-spree around the city, Bane simply sits back and waits for three months as Batman runs himself to exhaustion in an attempt to round them up. In the meantime, he also managed to deduce that Batman is Bruce Wayne. He finally made his move by waiting for Batman to return from a night of patrolling in Wayne Manor...

The exhausted Batman stands no chance against Bane dosed up on Venom, and after a long drawn-out fight in Wayne Manor - extended by Bane holding back until the last second - the issue ended with Batman's spine being broken on Bane's knee. After throwing the broken Batman onto a busy street, he immediately seized control of all organised crime in the city.

As one of the few villains to actually beat Batman, the treatment that he received in Batman & Robin was even more insulting to his character than he would have been otherwise. I'm not sure about all of the backstory, and the Venom angle, but a steroid-using criminal genius? That would definitely fit into Christopher Nolan's Gotham City, whilst at the same time keeping true to the comics. My reservations aren't with the character, but whether Thomas Hardy will be able to pull off the look of the character. Sure, he has beefed up before for his role in Bronson, but Bane has always been even bigger than that. Unhealthily large, in fact. Though they could use clever camera angles to exaggerate his size.

Oh... and if you want to know how the above story played out, read on... if not, then don't.

Bruce Wayne passed on the mantle of Batman to a newcomer named Jean-Paul Valley (aka Azrael), who became increasingly unhinged and violent. After adapting the costume into a high-tech suit of armour (think an amalgamation of Batman and Iron Man), he eventually took on Bane, and beat him to a pulp. A few years later, when Bruce Wayne had returned to the series, Bane reappeared as the right hand man of Ra's al Ghul. The long-awaited grudge match ended with Bane's defeat... and the outcome has been the same every time the pair have clashed since. So I guess that Venom isn't as helpful as he thinks, and his big victory was entirely down to only taking on his target when he was on his lowest ebb.... maybe he's a pussy after all.