10 Hyped Movie Villains Who Turned Out To Be Just Henchmen

3. Bane - The Dark Knight Rises

Bane Dark Knight Rises
Warner Bros.

Tom Hardy had one hell of a job on his plate with The Dark Knight Rises.

Following on from Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning portrayal of the Joker, everyone expected Hardy to knock it out of the park, and while his villain didn't quite reach the heights of Ledger's maniacal clown, his Bane is by far one of the better villains in the comic-book movie space.

Plus, out of all three main villains in the Dark Knight trilogy, Bane is the only one who posed much of a physical threat to Batman, with Scarecrow, Ra's, Joker and Two-Face never coming close to inflicting as much damage on the hero as Bane did in the series' final chapter.

But towards the end of the story, things took a drastic turn. From the start, it was assumed that Bane was the one calling the shots, but a late-game twist revealed that it was actually Talia Al Ghul who was determined to finish her "father's work" (read: destroying Gotham), turning Bane into something of a glorified bodyguard who was assisting her... because he was in love.

None of this took away from the character's many great moments throughout the movie, but it was certainly jarring to see the bulky, masked brute reduced to a tearful wuss who appeared to be caught in the friendzone.

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!