Bane Announced as the Villain of the Next Batman Movie

It looks like Christopher Nolan, the director of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, is continuing to right the wrongs of the previous Bat-Franchise - first Two-Face, and now Bane.

Last week, it was finally announced that the roles of Selina Kyle (more commonly as Catwoman) and Bane had been cast to Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy respectively, in the upcoming sequel The Dark Knight Rises. As Catwoman has always been something of an anti-hero, this news leads one to believe that the primary villain of the picture will be Bane, a character introduced in the early 90s.

But for the uninitiated, who is Bane? And how can he live up to Heath Ledger's defining depiction of the Joker?
One of the key things that hurts Bane's reputation is his appearance in the 1997 bomb Batman & Robin, a film that destroyed the superhero genre as a whole until it was revived by first Blade, and then X-Men in 2000. In Batman & Robin, Bane was portrayed as mindless strongman, Poison Ivy's top goon and reduced to muttering unintelligible sounds. The thing is, this was never who the character was in the comics - the actual villain is someone more than worthy of being the primary villain in a movie.

That's because Bane was never a mindless henchman; if anything, he was the mastermind who in the source material famously broke Batman's back over his knee.

Bane was originally a prisoner in South America, who was serving life imprisonment for the crimes of his father, until he opted to a medical experiment where he was given incredible strength by the drug known as Venom. In many ways, Bane is the ultimate combination of brains and brawn, as in addition to his uncanny strength, even after he kicked his Venom addiction, he's always been a calculating, brilliant criminal mastermind, the one villain who truly brought the normally omnipotent-seeming Batman down to his knees.

However, the announcement of Bane as a villain in The Dark Knight Rises is a highly unexpected choice. Many might question why the production chose Bane, as opposed to many other more well-known villains such as the Riddler or the Penguin.

The answer is simple, though - because Bane is a different kind of threat. Joker was never a physical threat to Batman; he was a psychological one. As amazing as the Joker was in The Dark Knight, using a villain such as the Riddler could easily come off as a pale imitation. Bane, on the other hand, is a foe that can challenge Batman both physically and intellectually. He can strike Bruce Wayne when he's at his weakest and bring him lower than he ever has been before.

It's hard to say what direction the movie will take with the character. For example, will the Venom drug be utilized? But the casting of Tom Hardy is encouraging. Given that and Christopher Nolan's so-far terrific track record, one can assume that this new depiction of Bane will be a very intriguing one.