In 2012 Tom Hardy took up the mantle of Bane for the Christopher Nolan blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. The plot for the movie did not follow any one Batman comic but, instead, was based on a few different stories:
- In Batman: Legacy Bane has ties to both Ra's Al Ghul and The League of Shadows.
- The story in the Batman, Incorporated series shows how dangerous Talia Al Ghul can be.
- Batman "No Man's Land" shows Gotham cut off from the rest of the world with rising numbers of criminals left inside to prey on whatever innocent remain.
- In Batman: Knightfall, Bane breaks Batman's back during a fight. It's glorious.
- Bane's voice, in the movie, is based on the voice of Bartley Gorman, the king of the gypsies:
I'm sure there are some inspiring stories that I am missing but, no matter, the point is that The Dark Knight Rises is a new retelling based on the comics... And not the movie version OF a comic. Does that make sense? When we look at the movie in this way it is easy to appreciate both Nolan and Hardy's work. Whether or not the movie villain matches up with your preconceived notions of what Bane should be- I think we can all agree that Tom Hardy's offering was pretty terrifying.
What follows is a list containing ten of the best Bane quotes from The Dark Knight Rises.
10. "Speak of the Devil and he shall appear."
9. "I'm Gotham's reckoning. Here to end the borrowed time you've all been living on!"
8. "Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you!"
7. "The shadows betray you, because they belong to me!"
6. "You don't fear death... you welcome it. Your punishment must be more severe."
5. "Let us not stand on ceremony, Mr. Wayne."
4. "You fight like a younger man, with nothing held back. Admirable but mistaken."
3. "We both know that I now have to kill you. You'll just have to imagine the fire!"
2. "There's a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth... Hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy... So simple... And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying. I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope. So, as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive so that you can watch them clamoring over each other to "stay in the sun." You can watch me torture an entire city and when you have truly understood the depth of your failure, we will fulfill Ra's al Ghul's destiny... We will destroy Gotham and then, when it is done and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die."
1. "Oh, you think darkness is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!"
