Those who follow Batman's mythology will know the basics about Bane's character.

He was born in a prison to serve his father's jail time, grew up in there, trained to
peak physical and mental capacity and eventually worked out Batman's identity
before being the first villain to successfully put the Bat out of action by snapping his
spine over his knee. He uses a chemical known as Venom to enhance his strength,
which is pumped into his spine and brain from several different hoses and pipes on
his body.
Now, in Nolan's unniverse, things are always a little different. We seen with Ledger's
performance as The Joker that sometimes the actor will focus on one aspect of the
characters personality and run with it from there. Ledger took the sadistic,
psychopatic side of the Joker and ran in the opposite direction of his predecessor Jack
Nicholson, who kept with playing on the Joker's more goofy and theatrical nature.
For Tom Hardy, he had his work cut out for him as the main villain, and I was
curious to see what aspect they'd dive into with his character.
Bane himself seems to be a very linguistic, cerebral character who makes his presence
known with charismatic speeches and genius level planning despite his appearances
as a large, brawny and muscular foe. Looks are very deceiving in this case, as
although he's got a mountain of muscles, most of the damage he inflicts is through
strategic preperation and mental planning. There's no actual mention of the Venom
the character is renowned for using, but it's assumed the chemical he breathes in on
his mask as a pain relief is a refference to the chemical he uses in the comic books.
While I liked the fact that Hardy focused on Bane's more calculating and intelligent
nature, there where two things that bothered me about it: First, his emphasis on
being intelligent and cunning almost seemed to belly his imposing physique and
dangerous skills as an assassin (as if he was a lifelong member of Mensa prior to becoming
a body builder), and second, his voice was so damn hard to understand that it actually
detracted from how intelligent and strategic the character was. What use is it giving
the character long, educated speeches and plenty of intellectual dialogue if the actor's

voice is nearly impossible to hear? His voice was almost like if Sean Connery had his
head tied up in a burlap sack after getting tipsy on a whiskey or two, and was talking
to himself inside a deep, wide, hallow cave. It took a lot away from my experience of
the character, personally, but maybe I'm just expecting too much from Nolan's villains
after seeing Ledger's rendition of the Joker.
Another thing which knocked a lot of love for Bane was the fact such an emphasis
was put on his past and his origins, yet by the end of the film, it leads to something
completely anti-climatic and the spotlight shifts from Bane to another character
alltogether. It turns out after all of that build up that he's not even the truw
mastermind behind the events of the film at all. That, to me, felt like an awful waste
of time and it completely undermined what credibility you had gained for him
throughout the film. It was as if they tried to really juice up Bane's signifigance in the
story and make him something memorable, yet the stars just weren't alligned for him.