Dr Will Hatch
Senior Member
Originally posted by Arachnid1
What I'm arguing is that those weren't Banes plans. The reason I believe this is because Bane never had any kind of motivation for taking down Gotham. He was just following Talia, who had all the reason in the world to destroy Gotham and Batman. Talia and he had some kind of relationship where they both felt they owed eachother. Bane felt he owed her his life for getting him out of the pit and into the league. He had no other motivation to want to put Wayne through hell like that other than at Talias request. He wasn't even in the League of Shadows until after Talia took control, which at best was 8 years prior when Ras' died. Ras' kicked him out, so there is no way Bane did it to avenge his death. This entire thing was orchestrated by Talia. Thats the only thing that makes sense. That's why her being the mastermind was heavily implied.I'm also arguing that Joker did significantly more with a whole lot less. Both of their end games was to destroy Gotham in some way, just like Ras' in Begins. Talias plan wasn't grander than Jokers, and neither of their plans were grander than Ras'. The exact same thing was at stake in all 3 movies. It was just through a different medium and a bit more direct. Joker was going to psychologically destroy an entire city (kind of like Ras' plan in the first one, except without the fear gas). Joker also did his carnage by himself, which made it even more impressive.
I also feel that Batman went through and sacrificed a whole lot more both before and after capturing the Joker. This was far from easy. For Bane, all he had to do was work out intensely for a few months while living in bad living conditions and enduring a ton of pain. He never really lost anything personal, and he never lost his motivation to come back to Gotham as Batman to save it. I feel that was do to his mental progression he had to make after the Joker, because Joker was a psychological adversary. This movie was more about him rebuilding himself and rising after the second movie which was the fall. Thats why Nolan made those words the tag lines for their respective movies. He wouldn't revisit the same plot point again (especially when it was already done so well). That would be retreading old ground.
Bane was once in the LOS, which would imply that he probably shared their ideals. The fact that he continued to do mercenary work afterwords almost confirms this. We don't know exactly what kind of work he did, but it had to have fit inside his destructive, totalitarian mindset. Combine this speculation with what we see on screen, as well as his fanatically devoted followers, and compare it against what we see and know about Talia, and it brings your theory into doubt. Obviously Talia and Bane owed each other, and were close to each other via their time in the Pit, which leads me to think that they were co-conspirators. If Bane was just another lackey, the movie we saw wouldn't make sense. Why focus so much on one guy who's not important in the grand scheme of things? At worst, Bane would be akin to the decoy Ra's Al Ghul that was killed in Batman Begins.
I do agree that The Joker is a much better villain, however. I enjoyed Bane(and Talia, what little we saw of her), but there's a good reason that one was nominated for an Academy Award and the other wasn't. It's not Hardy's fault, I blame the flaws of the movies instead.