On Darkness and Stuff

I thought I'd stop writing about The Dark Knight Rises but I did want to make a point on Bane.

How does he eat?

Nolan re-imagined a different character from the comics, which I much preferred: a mercenary who is very strategic in carrying out his plans and carries an aura of power by his sheer presence and brute strength. The only defining feature he has is a mask covering his mouth. It takes a lot of talent to pull off the kind of acting Tom Hardy did with just using his eyes for expressions.

Now a big thing I liked about Bane was his voice. When footage of the prologue was shown to critics back in December, there was a lot of discussion that Bane's voice was difficult to hear. I waved that off as no big deal, but apparently enough people complained for Nolan to change it, and I'm glad he did. I really like the final outtake of his voice, which makes him sound very frightening. Take a listen for yourself!



No doubt actor Tom Hardy was able to create a really good voice for Bane, but Bane also had some interesting things to say. One thing I definitely remembered was in his first fight against the Bat:

"You think darkness is your ally; you merely adopted 

the dark. I was born in it, molded by it ... The 

shadows betray you, because they belong to me."

There's just something in that that resonated with me, and now I'm sure I know what that is. In light of reading an article by Tim Challies titled Sin Wants To Be Your Friend, I see Batman as someone who, like many of us, has relied on something that cannot be relied upon. The thing that he thought he knew ended up betraying him, because it never truly belonged to him in the first place but to another.

Don't let darkness fool you. You think you can have it work for you, but in the end it belongs to someone else.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John