Bane is one of the few, popular, recurring villains in the various DC universes. These live-action universes include:
- Batman & Robin (1997)
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
- Gotham (2014)
While reading up on the DC Fandom Wiki, Bane seems to have different histories concerning his origin and identity. According to the DC Wiki Fandom page, there was a relaunch in 2011 of the line of DC characters.
So, in this particular instance, Bane’s background has had some alterations. One of the general details about Bane that is consistent with his origin is that his incredible strength was enhanced from a drug referred to as Venom.
While that concerns Bane in the comics, this does leave freedom for live-action adaptations to portray and give whatever backstory the writers see fit. Isn’t that something live-actions usually do anyways?
Instead of rating and ranking the portrayal of Bane from the previously mentioned live-action portrayals, I am going to individually compare and analyze them.
Batman & Robin (1997)
Antonio Diego is the name of a test subject in this universe. Dr. Jason Woodrue is the one who injects him with what he calls his “super soldier serum” which has the codename “Venom” made up of “steroids and toxins”.
With the success of transforming Diego into “The ideal killing machine.” he calls him Bane, “The bane of humanity’.” The term bane refers to: “something, typically poison, that causes death.” and Bane was literally enhanced by a drug that gave him a poisonous aura. Diego was merely a scrawny man, a “serial murderer serving life in prison” and with Venom he has become extremely buff and strong.
Not to mention, Dr. Woodrue took samples of Venom from another Doctor, Pamela Isley, who was researching a way for plants to fight humanity back. When Dr. Isley witnessed the Bane experimentation, she refused to work together with Dr. Woodrue. Intending to kill her, he pushes her, then pushes an entire table of the Venom serum over her. Ivy vines entwined her, and the ground took her, and she was reborn as Poison Ivy.
I noted this information, because Ivy and Bane are working together. Bane works like Ivy’s personal muscle. My guess from the experiment Bane underwent, it scrambled his eggs too. Dr. Woodrue mentioned when explaining the procedure how he drilled three holes somewhere in his skull or brain when injecting Venom.
This seems to explain why Bane in this movie does not have fluent verbal speech. He’s like a child repeating certain words when Ivy gives him an order. For instance, when Mr. Freeze said “Is the party over?” Bane repeated “over” and as he was placing bombs on the floor, he repeated “bomb” each time he placed one down.
While Bane is incredibly strong, he seems to only be good in that sense considering this was a military experiment meant for creating top-notch soldiers. Soldiers like this are created for the sole purpose of strength. Also, there is a button on his suit that Ivy presses when she wants him to do certain damage, which I suppose you can think of as going “sicko mode” when activated.
If I were to describe this version of Bane, put simply, he’s a big mutated being with great strength. All brawn and no brain, following Ivy doing as she tells him to. Bane is canon in the comics to actually be super intelligent, but it seems that many adaptations of Bane forget this or neglect it.
There’s not much to his character in this universe, so he’s not exactly as interesting as the other Bane’s. His downfall was when Batgirl removed the tube (which kept Venom pumping into him) from his head, which shrunk him back to his scrawny size.
Ultimately, we can then see that this wasn’t the type of experiment where the drug was infused with his DNA, but rather just an enhancement that needed to remain attached to him.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
In this trilogy, Bane appears in the third film being loaded onto a plane, implying he was kidnapped. Turns out, that was Bane’s plan all along, and with some outside help they did what they were there to do on the plane: kill some people, blow the plane up, and then escape.
Going into his backstory, we learn that he was banished to a hole where no one can escape. Ra’s al Ghul, a villain introduced in the first movie in the trilogy, had romantic affairs with a certain woman. Ra’s al Ghul was exiled to the pit, but his lover made a deal to take his place in the hole and set him free, which he did not know of.
During this time, she was pregnant. She had her child in the pit and raised the child for some time, until one day the doctor in the hole left her cage door unlocked. She was taken by the prisoners, and did not survive.
Her child was saved by one of the prisoners, and the child was the first to escape the pit, climbing all the way to the top and out. Throughout, we are led to believe that the child was Bane, but the child was actually in fact the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, and Bane was her savior.
Talia al Ghul is the child’s name and Miranda Tate is her alias. Bane was completely loyal to her, and Talia acknowledged his love for her. When Talia had escaped the hole, she found her father and came to Bane’s rescue. The prisoners and doctor had already done their dirty work to him, which is why he wears a mask that keeps him from suffering.
Nonetheless, the League of Shadows took Bane and Talia in and trained them. According to the DC Wiki Fandom page, “The League of Shadows was an ancient and powerful secret society whose stated purpose was to restore balance to the world by enacting purges at various points in history.”
Talia’s father, however, only saw Bane as a monster and a reminder of the hell his wife was left in. Talia explained, “He excommunicated Bane from the League of Shadows. His only crime was that he loved me.” For some time, she could not forgive her father, until Bruce Wayne murdered him in Batman Begins.
Now that Bane’s origin has been addressed, it is clear that while he is the protector of Talia, he is completely loyal to her. Not only does he have strength, but in this universe he displayed intelligence and strategy.
During his iconic speech to Gotham, he managed to manipulate citizens into taking over and trashing the rich neighborhoods. This was all going according to Talia’s plan to destroy Gotham.
Overall, Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Bane was an accurate representation of Bane himself in the live-action. Not only is his strength displayed, but so is his way of words and the way he can instigate persuasion among people.
Gotham (2014)
While Bane was only casted in four episodes in season five, the show was quick to give us his origin. We meet a soldier named Eduardo Dorrance who was prior friends with James Gordon (Captain of the Gotham City Police Department) when Gordon was still a soldier.
Gordon did not know of Eduardo’s mission in Gotham, but when he found out, he did not want anything to do with it. Therefore, Eduardo’s orders were to eliminate him. Instead, Gordon was able to fight him later on and pierce his body through a sharp object and left him to die.
While he was dying, Theresa Walker, the one who saved him a long time ago in a “hole” or prison in Peña Dura, and the one who gave him his mission, found him in his critical condition. Turns out, she was keeping true to a promise she made to him when she found him in that prison.
We find out then that Walker is her alias, and her real name is Nyssa al Ghul, the daughter of another known villain Ra’s al Ghul. Her ultimate goal is to fulfill her father’s final mission, which is to cleanse Gotham City in fire, while also getting her revenge for his death by killing the two she blames for his murder.
After finding him, she brought him to Dr. Hugo Strange (a scientist who is obsessed with human experimentation). Dr. Strange altered him to make him stronger and less human-like. During the extremely painful and lengthy transformation, she said to him, “You’re going to be reborn. And then you’ll be the bane of the unjust. The bane of the corrupt. The bane of anyone who opposes us.” ultimately giving him his newborn identity of Bane.
From the beginning of Dorrance’s first appearance before he became Bane, he portrayed not only skill in combat, but he also portrayed his one intelligence and cleverness. While being a soldier, he did have his strength. Becoming Bane, his strength was enhanced. Unlike The Dark Knight Rises, Bane is the one who was saved and Nyssa al Ghul is his savior. The roles are reversed, but consistently he is loyal.
Overall, Bane has his own set characteristics and origin to an extent, but in each universe he is altered a bit. While I said I’m not ranking and rating these portrayals, I will say that the least accurate portrayal of Bane based off the live-actions was from Batman & Robin. The movie itself was cheesy and colorful- not really dark in atmosphere and theme. Despite the flaws of some of the plots in Gotham and the fact that my favorite chaotic neutral villain is Dr. Strange, I still find that they tied Bane’s origin and transformation in nicely.
As for Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, the trilogy itself is well-liked, the universe’s Joker is iconic, and I find that this version of Bane has a place for being iconic as well. However, I realize maybe I wish to have seen more of him, because while he was a villain and in cahoots with Talia, he was a character of support and the movie would not have played out the way it did without his help.
With that said, I hope my insight has enlightened you and I’d love to talk about this in-depth! If you’d like to see more of my random content or would like to contact me, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Tumblr. You may also email me at jrnw99@gmail.com if you prefer.
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