The Dark Knight Rises Villain Bane

After releasing the first image of Batman's new villain in The Dark Knight Rises via Twitter hash tag (and now officially), the internet is abuzz about Bane, and Tom Hardy, the actor portraying him in the newest Batman film. The mask that Tom Hardy is pictured wearing, is as much cause for buzz as Tom Hardy himself is.

The first thing I want to discuss about is Bane's headpiece in The Dark Knight Rises. In the comics, Bane was forced to be a test subject for a mysterious drug called Venom, which had killed every other test subject. This test almost kills Bane, but he survives and realizes that this Venom gives him greatly increased strength and power. Unfortunately, he has to take the Venom, injected into his brain, every twelve hours.

That is where his headpiece comes in at. Aside from just being a super villain fashion accessory, his mask also provides a series of tubes and conduits that enabled the Venom to be pumped directly into his brain. At first, the filmmakers of The Dark Knight Rises were unsure if they would incorporate this design into their Hollywood version of Bane. Well, upon closer inspection of the picture released by Warner Bros., it looks like they may have kept some of the functionality in the mask in The Dark Knight Rises. On the front of his mask, there are a set of skeleton fingers. It is possible that the Venom is now administered orally, which could make the skeleton fingers a type of breathing tubes. There is also a possibility, with the black tubing that goes around and over his head, that injection into the brain is still in The Dark Knight Rises

Next up is Tom Hardy. For those of you who may not know the name, but you remember the face, lets look at a couple roles before Bane and The Dark Knight Rises. Tom Hardy's breakout role was as Eames, in the 2010 sci-fi movie Inception, but if you check out award winning series Band of Brothers from 2001, you will see Tom Hardy as Pfc. John Janovec. You can also see Hardy in Black Hawk Down and Star Trek Nemesis. So now you have no excuse to not know who the newest Batman villain is in The Dark Knight Rises.

I am sure there will be many more casting updates as the film goes on, but for an initial website launch, hats must go off to Warner Bros. for this one.

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