10 Awesome Movie Villains That Had Totally Lame Deaths

10. Bane - The Dark Knight Rises

Tom Hardy's Bane really is awesome. The problem is Heath Ledger's Joker. Before Ledger, most movie villains at least stood a chance at individuality, now every single performance is held up to the Joker litmus test of on screen bad guys.

Nolan and Ledger had effectively set the bar so high it would've taken nothing short of a miracle to come close to what they had achieved. The Dark Knight Rises has its share of problems; the fact that Gotham fares better under Wayne and Gordon's all encompassing lie perpetuated by The Dent Act and that life actually gets worse when Bane lets the truth "have its day," sat awkwardly with audiences, whether they realised it or not.

Hardy's Bane is a unique: motivated, lethal and clever. The voice work received enough complaints from the IMAX previews to force Nolan and Hardy to remix the vocal tracks at the last minute, nonetheless, Bane's vocalisation has now become a parody of itself, imitated, aped and analysed but above all, accepted and enjoyed by fans of the character.

His immense physicality and meticulous 'diabolical plan' skills are self-evident, as he has Batman by his furry little b*lls for most of the film. So, when Catwoman rocked up on the Bat-Pod and sent him spinning across the floor like a Border Collie on linoleum, it was a colossal anti-climax. Awesome villain, but it's movie sin to go out like that - off guard and crying like a puppy dog.