10 Hyped Movie Villains Who Turned Out To Be Just Henchmen

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.