10 Badass Movie Villains Defeated Way Too Easily

5. Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)

The Dark Knight Rises Bane
Warner Bros.

Tom Hardy's physically-intimidating brute was the only villain from the Nolan trilogy to truly give Batman a run for his money in the melee department.

He broke the Bat's back, brought a reign of terror to his city, and destroyed his spirit with ease. Hell, Bruce was so scarred by the whole Bane thing that he retired shortly afterwards and handed the crime-fighting baton off to someone else.

To put it plainly, Bane was the very definition of a badass, and while he did pose a difficult challenge to Batman for the majority of the film's runtime, his eventual demise did not send him off with the satisfying wallop that the character deserved.

After a spectacular brawl with the Dark Knight and a solid emotional backstory scene, his subsequent death via a blast from Catwoman's Batpod cannon incited more of an "oh" reaction than an "oh wow", almost like Nolan couldn't come up with a creative way to off the villain, and so, had to resort to using a quick explosive cheat code.

Bane really should've died (or been left in an injured state) after Batman beat the lights out of him, which would've been a nice flip of the earlier scene where Bane did the same to Batman. This would've also meant that Batman alone took down his most potent foe, rather than having someone else kill him with ease.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!