Plot summary: Sick of Batman always foiling his schemes, Rupert Thorne hires the enormous assassin, Bane, to dispose of the vigilante once and for all.
Each Saturday and Sunday Matt Waters recaps an episode of the legendary Batman: The Animated Series, building an overall ranking along the way. Plus best performances, the ever-popular Villain Watch and more!
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Notes
Episode Title: ‘Bane’
Original Air Date: September 10th, 1994
Directed: Kevin Altieri (19)
Written: Mitch Brian (3)
This is obviously heavily borrowing from Bane’s huge debut comic, ‘Knightfall’, albeit with toned down violence.
Despite the aforementioned comic’s popularity, the producers were hesitant to use Bane as they felt he was a little gimmicky. Didn’t stop Joel Schumacher…
Oh hey, Mitch Brian. It’s been a while! After writing the first and seventh episodes of the series he took a lengthy break to work on… Presence of Mind… or something.
Recap
Candice, Rupert Thorne’s right-hand woman not seen since ‘Two-Face’, eagerly awaits a plane at Gotham airport. The reason for her excitement? An enormous passenger wearing a suit and a luchador mask (an eternally dope look).
Rupert Thorne works up a sweat on a punching bag, KO-ing one of his smart-mouthed employees for making a crack about Batman. Speaking of which, Bane arrives and collects his advance payment, a suitcase full of diamonds.
Bane hatches his plan, unleashing Killer Croc in order to lure Batman out where he can be studied. Ever the good vigilantes, Batman & Robin swing into action and take down Croc’s accomplices before chasing the enormous reptile-man into the sewers.
Having seen enough, Bane mercilessly beats the piss out of Croc (with assistance from Venom). The Dynamic Duo drag his unconscious body back to the surface where they find the Batmobile a smoking wreck!
Interrogating the heavily-bandaged Croc in prison, Batman learns of the Venom and Bane’s accent, which is apparently all that’s needed to bring up some files on super-solider experiments in the Peña Dura prison. Hey guess who the subject was?
Candice and Bane conspire to take out Rupert Thorne after the job is complete and seal the deal with a kiss before Rupes arrives. Robin spies on the meeting but gets noticed and easily captured.
Batman follows Candice home and confronts her, but Bane telephones to gloat about capturing The Boy Wonder, whose costume flaps in the breeze across the street with rendezvous instructions pinned to it.
Arriving at the destination, Batman goes toe to toe with Bane, who shrugs off his strikes and counters his throws. He even survives being launched into the harbour with an enormous harpoon gun and crushes a Batarang like a toy.
But before the behemoth can break him in half, Batman wises up and slashes at his Venom-injection device, causing him to violently overdose on the super-steroid and pass out.
Bruce escorts the defeated Bane to Rupert Thorne’s office and unmasks him. Adding insult to injury, he plays a tape of Candice & Bane’s planned betrayal and then struts out, victorious. (Oh, and he also rescued Dick, who engaged Candice in a ridiculous water-fight during the dramatic climax.)
Best Performance
Tom Hardy obliviously left an indelible mark on Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, but for as good of an overall acting performance as it is… the voice is bad. Yet here is Henry Silva eighteen years earlier, perfectly capturing the essence of the character.
I assume most producers prefer Hardy impressions to try and cash in on a billion dollar movie, but before that Bane tended to be a generic shouty man. Heck, does he even have lines in Batman & Robin? Silva instead makes him Latino & Proud without sacrificing any of his sense of danger. He’s just an enormous, suave, slab of beef. There are even hints at the more intelligent persona that he tended to be missing in most non-TDKR adaptations.
John Vernon continues to be a great supporting actor, and Diane Michelle once again imbues Candice with such chaotic, traitorous energy. I wish she appeared more, to be honest.
Ranking
I remembered liking this one a lot less a few years ago than I did this time around. It’s as good of a villain-centric episode as you’ll find in the whole series, with a tantalising set-up, solid raising of the stakes, and a surprisingly satisfying payoff.
The visuals, particularly the cityscape scenes, are a notable step backwards. I’m not sure if it was in production for a long time or the exact opposite, but it was bothersome to me at first. It’s not a total loss though, with an excellent shot where Candice opens a mirrored door, with Batman appearing in the reflection when she closes it again. But the writing and voice acting do most of the heavy lifting here.
The fight scene was shockingly good for how obviously rushed it was, with Batman giving up on strikes and moving to lucha-takedowns, only for Bane to get wise and counter him. That kind of silent trial and error progression, telling a story through physicality, is all I’m looking for in a fight scene to be honest.
The only thing keeping it from going higher is that it’s basically pure-action, while almost every episode above it has a strong emotional backdrop. The few that don’t are superlative Paul Dini masterpieces.
- The Laughing Fish
- Mask of the Phantasm
- Almost Got ‘im
- Heart of Ice
- Harlequinade
- The Trial
- Shadow of the Bat Part I
- I Am the Night
- Robin’s Reckoning Part I
- The Man Who Killed Batman
- Perchance to Dream
- Two-Face Part I
- Bane
- A Bullet For Bullock
- Joker’s Favor
- Read My Lips
- Feat of Clay Part II
- Catwalk
- The Demon’s Quest Part II
- Harley and Ivy
- Robin’s Reckoning Part II
- House & Garden
- Beware the Gray Ghost
- Mad as a Hatter
- Heart of Steel Part II
- Appointment In Crime Alley
- Two-Face Part II
- Pretty Poison
- Shadow of the Bat Part II
- Feat of Clay Part I
- His Silicon Soul
- Off Balance
- Vendetta
- Birds of a Feather
- Heart of Steel Part I
- On Leather Wings
- See No Evil
- The Clock King
- It’s Never Too Late
- Joker’s Wild
- Eternal Youth
- The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy
- The Cat and the Claw Part I
- Zatanna
- Day of the Samurai
- Avatar
- The Demon’s Quest Part I
- The Mechanic
- The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
- Terror in the Sky
- P.O.V.
- Christmas with the Joker
- Fear of Victory
- Be a Clown
- The Worry Men
- What is Reality?
- Fire From Olympus
- Night of the Ninja
- Mudslide
- The Cat and the Claw Part II
- Nothing to Fear
- Prophecy of Doom
- Tyger, Tyger
- Blind as a Bat
- If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
- Dreams In Darkness
- The Last Laugh
- Cat Scratch Fever
- Moon of the Wolf
- Paging the Crime Doctor
- Time Out of Joint
- Sideshow
- The Under-Dwellers
- The Forgotten
- The Terrible Trio
- I’ve Got Batman in My Basement
Villain Watch
Bane (Henry Silva) (first appearance)
Say what you want about the pale blue tights, the suited version at the start of the episode absolutely rules, threading the needle by going neither full wacky Luchador nor Hulk-rip-off. That’s helped by little touches like him ducking to get off the plane, Candice’s car sagging when he gets in it, a flunky struggling to lift his suitcase (which he carried with ease), and hitting a punching bag so hard it flies off its chain. These things go a long way.
They also do a great job of establishing he’s more than a big dumb meathead, deploying a plan to study his opponent and spotting Robin from across the street and then hunting him down with ease. Plus he kicks Croc’s ass off-camera, which is doubly-effective as he establishes himself as the new upper echelon for physical challenges to Batman. Of course he ultimately loses to our hero at the end of the episode, but only when Bruce exploits a weakness.
He’s going to debut very high, just below the show’s true elite. I look forward to him not being used this well again outside of comic books for eighteen years!
Rupert Thorne (John Vernon) (eighth appearance)
As has been his role throughout the series, Thorne comes in tremendously handy when trying to facilitate certain plots. He’s Batman’s richest ‘normal’ villain (no clue if he’s meant to be wealthier than Penguin), which makes him perfect for an episode about a ruthless mercenary.
I’ll give him a generous bump back into the top 20.
Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid) (fifth appearance)
Despite only appearing for a couple of minutes, this is easily Croc’s second best outing. Bane selects him because he’s the only villain who approximates his own size (making Bane look smarter, and ensuring Croc is plot-essential). He pulls off a brazen robbery while wearing an enormous trench coat, presumably a reference to his disguise in ‘Vendetta’, and then gets his reward for a job well done: a savage beating from Bane and some torture from Batman.
Thanks for playing, Croc, and welcome back to the top twenty as well!
- The Joker
- Poison Ivy
- Harley Quinn
- Mr. Freeze
- Two-Face
- The Ventriloquist
- Catwoman
- The Phantasm
- Bane
- Mad Hatter
- Penguin
- HARDAC (and Randa Duane)
- Clayface
- Ra’s al Ghul
- The Riddler
- Lloyd Ventrix
- Killer Croc
- Count Vertigo
- Clock King
- Rupert Thorne
- Nivens
- Josiah Wormwood
- Scarecrow
- Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
- Talia al Ghul
- Sid the Squid
- Thoth Khepera
- Maxie Zeus
- Jimmy ‘Jazzman’ Peake
- Tony Zucco
- Man-Bat
- Hugo Strange
- Red Claw
- Arnold Stromwell
- Mad Bomber
- Tygrus
- Rhino, Mugsy and Ratso
- Kyodai Ken
- Gil Mason
- Nostromos (and Lucas!)
- Cameron Kaiser
- Dr. Dorian (and Garth)
- Mad Dog
- Ubu
- Professor Milo
- Romulus
- Sewer King
- Boss Biggis
- Montague Kane
- The Terrible Trio
Plugs
Eager for more long-form coverage of Batman? Why not check out my podcast with Mike Thomas, The Tape Crusaders, which reviewed every Batman movie and delved a tiny bit into the animated series… and The Snyder Cut!
Apparently doing this twice a week wasn’t enough for me as I’ve just launched Marvel Mondays which will recap the most recent episode of the various MCU TV Shows, starting with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
The Reel World 