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If its first official viral marketing campaign is to believed, The Dark Knight Rises will cast British actor Tom Hardy as one of Batman’s most powerful villians—Bane.
The SuperHeroHype website found the image of Tom Hardy of Inception fame, cast as Bane, through a viral marketing campaign that seemed like a virtual treasure hunt. Fans of The Dark Knight Rises noticed that the website had a muffled audio, which when analyzed, pointed to #thefirerises. The Twitter account for “thefirerises” points to an image page on the official The Dark Knight Rises website, which has a mosaic image of Tom Hardy as Bane.
The Bane photo might be the first officially released image of The Dark Knight Rises, and shows Tom Hardy with his muscled back turned towards the camera while cast in Bane gear and mask. The muscled and flawed super-villian, who gets his super-strength through a dose of a drug known as “Venom”, is not as well known to Batman fans as other villians such as the Joker and the Riddler, but nonetheless is a hit among comic book fans. Bane first appeared in the hit “Knightfall” comic series as the first villian to have defeated Batman till his eventual defeat at the hands of Azrael, another Batman character.
Bane has also been present in other Batman comics and DC Comics cartoons and comics. The flawed super-villian is portrayed as powerful, intelligent but also chronically confused about his identity as hero and villian in various comics and episodes. He has also appeared in a previous Batman movie, the 1997 Batman & Robin movie, where he plays a very minor role as vamp Ivy’s sidekick.
The photo of Tom Hardy as Bane appears on The Dark Knight Rises‘ official website, and if so, comic book fans can expect him to have a much larger screen presence in Christopher Nolan’s new Batman adventure.
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