Christian: Bane
As celebrated as Batman is for his heroic deeds and unfortunate upbringing (sorry about your parents, Bats), it seems that many of his adversaries are quite capable of giving him quite a spanking and taking Gotham for a loop before he can even wake up for his midmorning tea and meditation. Even though The Dark Knight Trilogy took a more grim look at our hero, facing him with moral decisions that even Batman had trouble deciphering, it still had one key thing in common with the comics: Batman got his butt handed to him on a silver platter.
I mean, sure, the Joker came along and almost blew up some boats, killed Rachel, blah blah blah, but show the part in “The Dark Knight” when the Joker takes over all of Gotham City and freaking runs the place for an extended amount of time. Bane, the man who broke the Bat, is just more well-equipped for this type of job. It’s one thing to be a little eccentric and have a few followers beat up on some people, but it’s another to disassemble a plane midflight, blow up a football stadium (with precision timing), take over Gotham City, and also break Batman’s back for good measure as well.
Plus Bane has intimidation coming out of his skin. If I saw him from miles away with a telescope, I would still wet myself knowing that he could be here any minute. As a professional terrorist, the man is just a better example of how to do a hostile takeover right the first time around. He goes from living in the sewers to walking the streets in his excessively large coat in a matter of days, while the Joker is probably still dangling from that wire at the end of “The Dark Knight.”
So here’s how Bane got his way: he cuts off Gotham from military access, refusing to share his toys with the government. He breaks Batman (seriously, this fact makes the whole argument valid) and then romps around his old city doing whatever he wants to just to spite the old hero. The fact that his followers are willing to die for him just because “they’re expecting a body” when the plane crashes is a sign that you don’t mess with this guy.
If we were debating who was the better, more twisted villain, this argument would be totally different. But for the man (or woman) most qualified to run Gotham, the award goes to Bane, simply because he is insane enough to get the job done. The Joker gets the consolation prize of happening to be the best villain in the world. Well played, gentlemen.
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