4. Remember The Other Bane?
There came a time back in the late 1990s where some wise-ass director by the name of Joel Schumacher decided to completely tarnish Batman's reputation and history to the point where everything registered with a nasty, terrible aftertaste. His last blood-curdling attempt came with Batman & Robin (1997), which sealed Schumacher's fate and brought the legacy of Batman films to an utter standstill. One of its biggest mishaps was the very unsettling and bizarre rendition of one of the film's villains, Bane. Played by the late Robert "Jeep" Swenson, and baring the name Antonio Diego before becoming the Venom-induced Bane, Schumacher took the absolute cartoon treatment for Bane, making him as goofy and one-dimensional as possible. Where he was a legitimate threat and adversary to Batman in the comics, he's just a standard henchman/enforcer for Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy's plot to take over Gotham City and the world. Even worse, he was hardly a challenge for the Dark Knight or the Boy Wonder in the actual film, therefore sticking to his henchman role. Simply put, it was an embarrassment. Fact check: Schumacher's Bane did nothing to advance the film; he was just there and stood in the corner until Schumacher decided he should look tough. Also, he not once spoke a coherent sentence. Nothing but mumbles and groans, with the occasional simple word coming from his over-exaggerated self. Now, on the other hand, Nolan's Bane managed to put all of Gotham City under duress and formulate a plot to have a nuclear device primed to incinerate the city at a moment's notice, but not before giving Gotham's citizens the chance to declare anarchy on the rich and wealthy and reclaim it in the name of inhuman justice and tyranny. Now for all those naysayers that continue to brand Nolan's Bane as not living up to the hype and not a great villain, just remember that someone far less talented created a far more devastating tragedy of the character.