The Dark Knight Rises

Bane, Hard Men and Hard Dogs

Forgive me for being a little slow on the uptake but it's just come to my attention that the next Christopher Nolan film is due for release in July 2012. I'm clearly not fanatical enough in my love of the Bat. Still, although I'm sure you real fanboys out there are ready to punish me for my ignorance by collectively cyber spitting in my direction, please indulge me a little.

How intrigued was I when I saw the pictures of the new villain? Do I want to meet that in a dark alleyway? No I do not. He looks like a bloody hard dog with a muzzle on it, the likes of which I'm not accustomed to seeing round here in North London, the pit bull capital of the world. Muzzle or no muzzle I'd still cross the street and take my chances with a drooling rottweiler that's still slobbering over the carcass of its last kill after having been let off its leash.

Well 'ard supervillain, Bane

Source: www.digitalspy.co.uk

Well 'ard dog

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

I want to start a campaign; the tagline of which would read 'if your dog's pure muscle buy it a muzzle'. The only kind of dogs that I want to see strolling next to me are the ones that wear a coat in a light spring breeze. You know, the ones that are so small that you wonder whether you should stroke it or call pest control.

A few rules;

• If you're smaller than your dog then your dog's too big.
• If your dog looks like it would get thrown out of the Olympics for taking performance enhancing drugs then your dog's too big.
• If your dog looks like it's spent its entire life eating pure protein lunches equivalent to the population size of a small country then your dog's too big.
• If your dog has a shit in the street and that shit looks like it came out of a large reptilian prehistoric animal that lived 230million years ago then YOUR DOG'S TOO BLOODY BIG. If you have to give it a name like Rex then surely that's a clue.

Really though dangerous dogs is a serious issue that just never seems to go away.


Anyway, how intrigued was I still, to find that hiding beneath the mask of the super psycho Bane was none other than Tom Hardy who is currently one of my favourite actors? Don't worry Tom I forgive both you and Christopher for Inception, which in my view could have been a great movie had it not been so unnecessarily complicated. Although I am willing to admit that perhaps I just don't get enough sleep and that's what's messed up my intellect. My mate on the other hand did catch up on some sleep... sat next to me at the cinema while I was scratching my head trying to work out what the hell was going on in that movie. Perhaps it was just one of those nights. You know, one of those cinema nights where you don't want to work your brain too hard. Where you just want an excuse to eat your own body weight in popcorn, scoff pic 'n' mix till you're so amped up it takes a week to come down from the sugar high. And let's not forget the main reason for going to see a movie on the big screen, to have a really lengthy conversation on your mobile phone until the person sat next to you wants to stab you in the eye with the straw from their Coca Cola... repeatedly or rub salsa in your hard to reach places. But there I go rambling again, off on one of my many cerebral detours.

Back to Bane, penned as 'the man who broke the Bat'.  Quite literally, for in the Knightfall story arc in the original comics he breaks Batman's back. Don't like the sound of that at all. No I do not. Upon checking the character's backstory on Wikipedia I find that,

    'Bane was born in the fictional Caribbean Republic of Santa Prisca, in a prison called Peña Dura ("Hard Rock"). His father Edmund Dorrance had been a revolutionary and had escaped Santa Prisca's court system. The corrupt government however decreed that his young son would serve out the man's life sentence, and thus Bane's childhood and early adult life are spent in the amoral penitentiary environment. '

Ahh, the rough justice of fictional lands. What follows involves several killings and altercations in which a teddy bear may have been involved but to cut a long story short...

    'Bane ultimately establishes himself as the "king" of Peña Dura prison. The prison's controllers take note and eventually force him to become a test subject for a mysterious drug known as Venom, which had killed all other subjects...  The Peña Dura prison Venom experiment nearly kills Bane at first, but he survives and finds that the drug vastly increases his physical strength, although he needs to take it every 12 hours (via a system of tubes pumped directly into his brain) or he will suffer debilitating side-effects'

I suppose that such a childhood would leave you a bit pissed off wouldn't it?

Bane (before the Christopher Nolan Treatment) Source: en.wikipedia.org