Anyone familiar with DC Comics will happily tell you that, for all his strength, the reason that the fearsome Bane was able to nearly destroy Batman was because he's Bruce Wayne's intellectual equal. It's what makes the character so interesting - he's got brains, brawn, and a moral code that doesn't exactly endear him to superheroes. In 1997's much-maligned Batman and Robin, Bane made his first film appearance - as a henchman for Poison Ivy. Unlike in the source material, this Bane was a musclebound mute who simply followed orders. Jeep 'The Ultimate Solution' Swenson played the villain, and did what he had to do (namely looking big and scary) semi-convincingly. Still, Bane's portrayal was a rude awakening for the millions of fans who followed the Knightfall storyline in print.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
