11 Terrible Early Drafts That Almost Ruined Iconic Villains

9. Bane - The Dark Knight Rises

The first movie version of Bane was an abomination, somewhat ironically. He was a day-glo luchador wrestler, pumped to the gills on a thinly-veiled allegory for steroids, suffering from permanent roid-rage and the kind of skin conditions that come second only to diminished penile size in the list of reasons not to use performance enhancers. In many ways he was a clever parallel for the state of high-level sports in the US, but there's very little doubt that was entirely accidental, and it's impossible to resist his awfulness.

But that iteration of the character was never quite as fatal for his viability as an inclusion in subsequent Batman fans as it could have been: he was after all the villain who had broken the Bat with his bare hands in Knightfall and who still represented the only tangible threat to the character. He was Batman's match, both in terms of battle nous and power, and while the Joker was the charismatic counter-point to the caped crusader, Bane was arguably even greater as s foe.

So his announcement for The Dark Knight Rises was always going to be exciting. That is until early concept art was released and it seemed Chris Nolan had replaced the over-pumped lucha of Schumacher's world with a an actual gimp...

Thank God Tom Hardy's face is too good to completely hide, eh?