Where is the Bane love?

Tom Hardy is 5 feet 9 inches tall. I am an inch shorter than this man. I say this because time and again I have been described as a man of below average height – which is true – yet, Tom Hardy is only an inch taller. I take this as an empowering piece of information.

Despite Hardy’s height impediment, he is one of the most physically imposing actors I have seen on the screen – I put him up there with Arnold Schwarzenegger. His performance in Bronson echoed that of a young Robert De Nero, as did his impressive turn in Warrior – but for me, it’s his turn as Bane that shows how special he is.

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I love The Dark Knight Rises – I think it is brilliant, ambitious and most of all brave. I also admit that the film is very much flawed, but not to the extent some believe it is. For instance, I do not think that there is much technical difference between The Dark Knight Rises and its much celebrated predecessor, The Dark Knight. The only difference to my mind is Heath Ledger.

Now when I think of The Joker, I don’t think of the comic book incarnations or Jack Nicholson for that matter, I think of Ledger – that tells you what a hell of a job he did in TDK. But Tom Hardy has done the same thing for the character Bane.

I can safely say, hand on heart, that if I was walking down the street late at night, I’d be more scared of the brute slowly walking towards me with his hands on the collars of his jacket than the bloke skipping and laughing next to him. Don’t get me wrong, I’d brown my pants if I encountered both of them – but Hardy’s Bane strikes me with more fear.

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I fear Bane more because it doesn’t take much to imagine a real life version of this character – and many of them at that. I don’t believe there many Joker’s in this world, this is despite the horrible events of the Aurora shooting.

Bane is a terrorist. He is smart, he is manipulative and his logic makes a warped kind of sense. While The Joker had no motive or ideology other than to create chaos – the presence of such things in Bane utterly terrifies me.

It is the rooting of this character in a post 9/11 reality and the addition of a physical menace that makes him special. Honest to god, he scares me.

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Let’s also not forget that all of Hardy’s performance was with a mask on. He had to portray a range of feelings with a mask on. I mean, stand in front of a mirror with a balaclava over your mouth – now act angry, tough, surprised, calm, worried, sad and happy. It isn’t as easy as it looks.

I accept that the voice is an acquired taste – I liked it, but I understand why it has been ridiculed. I don’t think the character would have been as menacing if he had an American or British accent. Maybe they were going for a non-Arabic foreign accent. Since 9/11, the foreign is a lot more threatening than the domestic.

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I truly believe that in time people will start to see The Dark Knight Rises the same way they see The Dark Knight – as a generational defining movie with outstanding performances. I accept that Hardy’s Bane will never be as beloved as Ledger’s Joker, and that is ok, but I feel his character and his work on that film deserves a lot more respect that it has gotten.

               The Dark Bear.    

The Dark W. Knight

I find it difficult to write about films I have a true burning love for, simply because I turn such pieces into an exercise of fitting clichés into sentences. So I end up writing about newish films that I have yet to form a concrete opinion on, or flawed films which I can give backhanded complements to, or films I absolutely hate so I can vent my frustrations.

But I actually wanted to try and write about a film I genuinely and whole heartedly love – Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. 

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I remember back when I was in secondary school, coming home for my lunch break – which was strange because I rarely did that. My Ma was kind enough to rustle something up and while I was talking to her through the kitchen window I noticed something on the telly. I ignored it at first because I figured it was a trailer for an action movie, but this image of a burning skyscraper was on there for sometime. Then I started to pay attention to the bright banner running along the bottom of the screen and just like that – a plane appeared on screen and crashed into the building.

“What the fuck?”

I was 12 years old.

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For me, The Dark Knight was one of the first truly great post-9/11 movies. It captures how I felt after that day in 2001 – and that was mainly scared.

Previous films and depictions of Batman show that it’s very easy for him to degenerate into a silly character. Nolan made the character a product of 9/11 – his Batman was deadly serious.

Everything about this film reminds me of how I felt after September 11 and how I saw other people react around me.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

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For me, at the centre of The Dark Knight is the idea of protecting innocent people by any means – even if the protector himself becomes corrupted by his task.

Yes, Heath Ledger’s Joker is an agent of chaos, but he had a simple role throughout the film and that was to corrupt the incorruptible – bring people down to his level.

This theme is at the centre of every thread of TDK. The corruption of the protector is at the heart of Harvey Dent’s plot and ultimately it drives Batman to develop the invasive sonar technology that helps to capture Joker.

Basically, this is a long winded way of me trying to say that to this day I believe TDK is a defence of President George W Bush.

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Another haunting image that I can’t ever forget is when Bush was in that school room, reading to the kids and an aide tells him what has just happened in New York. And he just sits there.

I’ve always asked myself why he didn’t abandon that photo-call, go straight into a war room and get to work. But the older I get, the more I question that initial reaction.

I’ve read quite a lot about President Bush and it is clear that he really wasn’t an intelligent man – a fact which I always find hard to reason with. How can someone with his academic record and his failed business ventures end up being President of the United States? Only in America, right? (To be fair to Bush, he was a successful Governor)

And it’s this man that America entrusted great powers to. America is a fascinating country, because, despite their hatred of monarchies and dictatorships, one man holds a huge chunk of power. The pressure George W Bush felt at that moment in the class room must have been greater than anything anyone who has achieved his position ever experienced.

This is why I feel a great deal of sympathy for him – everything after that photo-opportunity in the class room changed. Everything.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I cringe when people blast Bush for being a war criminal (he may very well be) and the worst president – especially if they argue this in an American accent. Polls before the invasion of both the Afghan and Iraq wars show that a majority of American approved of it. And of course they did, because if they were like me, they were terrified.

You have to remember the way people spoke after 9/11. People were rightly angry, scared and vengeful. Damn it, it was ok to discriminate towards Muslims after 9/11 – Google “Muslim hate crime after 9/11”, it makes for terrifying reading.

Bush was the leader Americans and, to a certain respect, Britons wanted because in him we saw a protector.

Another image that resonates with me after 9/11 is Bush standing on Ground Zero giving his much celebrated at the time, “We hear you” speech. Bush was encouraged every step of the way in the actions he took, not just by his Darth-Vader-like Vice-President, Dick Chaney, but by the public. 

Never forget that George W Bush was re-elected.

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I love The Dark Knight because it makes me re-evaluate the past. The great films reflect the time in which they were made. I think Christopher Nolan's Batman does greatly resemble the presidency of George W Bush.

I personally believe that the world is a much more dangerous place because of George W Bush’s presidency, but I don’t think that’s because he’s evil or even a bad man. I just think he wasn’t clever enough or strong enough to deal with the situation he was dealt with.

But it is also disingenuous for us, the public, American or British, to wipe our hands of the mess Bush made – we are complicit. We allowed it to happen. Yes, a lot of people protested, but simply not enough. Again, he was re-elected.

Every time I hear a Bush basher (giggles) deconstruct his admittedly poor terms in office, especially when it comes to foreign policy, I think of the boat scene in TDK. We all believe that we have convictions and if given the power we’d do something about them. But, in reality, the majority of us would have done nothing and hope that somebody else does the hard work for us - like the characters in TDK.

                          @Chocoteddyfilms