#4 We will see Bane’s Backstory
Now like I’ve said a hundred times, I don’t have a pdf copy of The Dark Knight Rises on my hard-drive, so my speculation is as good as anyone’s. Before you write me off as some crazy Batnut-job however, recall the first piece of media released by Warner Brothers to promote the film.
There’s no concrete proof that we won’t see a fully developed Bane by the very beginning of the film, but listen closely to that chant. I’m not the first one to interpret it as Bane, Bane, Matalo Matalo Bane, Bane Matalo Matalo. This loosely translates to “Bane, Bane Kill him kill him.”
Now in the comics we are given a lengthy backstory to Bane that involves him serving his father’s prison time as a child. He is sentenced to “do a man’s time” and he sure manages to endure it like a man. He fights his way to the top, pumps iron like a beast and reads every book he can get his hands on to become the super-intelligent ultra-strong King of the exotic Peña Dura prison.
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that the prison that Bane spent his entire childhood, adolescent and teenage life was in the fictional Caribbean Republic of Santa Prisca. The language seems to be Latin based, pointing to the possibility that the released audio is from his tenure at Peña Dura. Could we be receiving flashbacks from Bane’s upbringing in prison?
If this is true, who could Bane’s cohorts be cajoling him into killing? Will it be crucial to the story? We already know that we’ll see a young Ra’s Al Ghul and a young Talia Al Ghul in flashback form, will it have anything to do with them?
Could this screengrab from the trailer be Bane’s escape from his hellish prison? It is during the part where Gordon mentions the rise of this ‘new evil,’ although that means nothing since trailers often cut footage together to make things look more dramatic than they actually are.
This doesn’t appear to be Bruce Wayne, so it may be safe to say that this is Bane especially since this particular hole in the ground doesn’t look like the one that young Bruce fell down in Begins.
They’re both round to be sure, but this is a general characteristic of holes in the ground. In many ways, Bane is a parallel to Batman, will we see the rise of Bane and the fall of Batman for the first time in this film? Speaking of things we can discern from the trailer-
#3 Commissioner Gordon will be put out of commission
Now this seems pretty obvious given that this is one of the most memorable portions of the trailer. Who didn’t feel at least a tiny twinge of depression when they saw Commissioner Gordon laying in that hospital bed?
So far we haven’t gotten any official word on how Gordon ended up in that bed. Did he stand up to Bane? Was he trying to round up all the prisoners from the Bane orchestrated mass outbreak at Blackgate prison? It seems that filming from the set may explain exactly what happened to poor Jim Gordon.
It was just last month when citizens of Pittsburgh snapped this video of Gary Oldman on top of Bane’s truck.
Do we need to remind you what ends up happening to that truck?
Sure, Bane might have a whole fleet of those vehicles, but this appears to be the end of the massive chase scene that we’ve been watching for the past month.
Of course, in the trailer we see Gordon talking to Batman saying that he must return, did the chase end with Batman leaving? Is there more than one chase in the film? This is the sketchiest piece of speculation that we’ve got so far since there is still so much that we don’t know about the events of the movie. The one conclusion that can be drawn is that Gordon will experience his own fall and he may inspire Batman to rise from the ashes of his retirement.
#2 We will find out more about Officer Johnathon Blake
Now the only thing we know about the mysterious Johnathon Blake is that he is a member of Gotham’s finest. We haven’t seen him thus far (even though we’ve been in and out of the police station several times) but that doesn’t matter, all the film needs to do is introduce him. This basically means that he doesn’t necessarily have to be a new recruit as many other speculative columns have pointed out.
The only real way that Blake’s presence in the film will make sense and tie to the other stories will be if he is a cop that is in some way associated with Batman.
Our theory? He is part of a special unit dedicated to tracking down the Bat. Gordon knows that Batman didn’t kill those people, but in the name of keeping Harvey Dent’s name clear he had to (literally) send the hounds looking for the Dark Knight. Maybe Blake is Gordon’s personal shadow, and if so, has he been given orders to throw the police off of the “hunting Batman” trail?
We’ve literally seen almost nothing in terms of filming from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, so aside from an exterior shot of him carrying a gas can, we have no water to swim in. He appears to be hiding from the Tumbler, so we think that he is trying to not be seen by Bane’s army (mostly because the Tumbler is camouflaged and not Batman’s trademark black.)
If this is true, he may not be the secret ace-in-the-hole-Robin/Riddler that some Nolan fans seem to think he will be. We do however think that GPD’s Johnathon Blake may have a larger role to play when-
#1 Bane will break the Bat
Ahh yes. The climax. We’ve gotten fake news, sketchy twitter confirmation and nothing else confirming that Bane will get to have his most famous moment in The Dark Knight Rises but it fits in so well with the overall tone of the story that it’s almost impossible to conclude that it won’t happen.
For those of you that don’t know what we’re talking about, it’s pretty well illustrated in one of the most famous panels in Batman history from the graphic novel Knightfall.
That’s Bane breaking Batman’s back over his knee and it’s without a doubt the single most famous thing his character has ever done. The plot of Knightfall revolves around Bane figuring out Batman’s identity and then basically flooding him with waves and waves of crime to exhaust him before finally meeting him the Batcave for a brawl that ultimately leaves Batman as a paraplegic.
What with Bane organizing a mass breakout at Blackwater prison and threatening a football stadium we think that this very well may be the case.
Also, what is one of the main through-lines that the story has to offer? Don’t forget what Mr.Wayne once told his son, “Why do we fall? So we can learn how to pick ourselves up.”
What did Batman literally do at the end of The Dark Knight?
We’ll give you a hint: he didn’t rise. Batman is going to have to pick himself up again, but this time he won’t have Gordon, Rachel or his father to help him, he’ll have to figure out how to do it all on his own.
This will lead to the final confrontation in the batcave, and unless Nolan pulls a Quentin Tarantino and decides to change history, we will see Batman fall again.
Now traditionally, Jean-Paul Valley (also known as Azreal) takes the mantle of Batman from Bruce Wayne. Could this mean that Christian Bale will pass the Batman torch to another actor? Will the cop working to track down Batman finally find him in his crippled state and realize what must be done in order to truly protect Gotham?
The thing is, this theme of rising and falling persists through the Dark Knight legend, so it only makes sense that Batman must go through the ultimate downfall in order to try to pick himself back up again. Who knows, maybe it won’t be Officer Johnathon Blake who finishes off Bane in the end. Maybe Bruce will find the strength to heal and take out Bane himself.
I mean, even the logo is a picture of a broken bat, how much more symbolic can you get?
To be completely honest, we’ve already heard that Warner Brothers plans to make more films even after Christopher Nolan throws in the towel and to have Batman be something of a symbol instead of just a man makes sense for a potential continuing franchise. Much like Dr.Who or 007, we can certainly see Warner Brothers using this tool of passing on the cowl much in the same way that the comics did.
We can see the dollar signs in Warner Brother’s eyes already.
Big thanks to James Bean at Hypable for letting me republish his great article here on Batman-News.com.
