I've seen complaints that Bane's first fight with Batman is too brief, but that's the point. Bruce is finished the moment that fight begins. He's treating Bane as "just another bad guy," while Bane is treating Batman as the single most important fight in the world, a pure expression of his love for Talia.
That connection, that backstory for Bane and Talia, is what I wasn't expecting, and it's one of the things I really like about the film. Bane's single-mindedness is boring to me if it's just because "he's the bad guy." But as the payoff to a chaste love story, with this blinding lifelong devotion defining all of Bane's actions, I love it. And again, like R'as Al Ghul and The Joker, he uses his henchmen as disposable game pieces, easily sacrificed and never missed. He has no loyalty to anything or anyone but Talia. If you try to make sense of the politics of the film, you'll drive yourself crazy. Sure, Bane instigates a class riot, but look closer. He exploits an uneasy lower class to destroy the ruling class and in the end, he doesn't seem remotely interested in the fate of either of them except inasmuch as it affects Bruce. That's all he really cares about, and he knows how much Gotham means to Bruce. If they just kill him, and the movie makes it clear that they easily could kill him at one point, then he's gone. It's done. It's clean. The film makes the point several times that this is all about breaking down everything that matters to Bruce and making him watch. Gotham symbolizes everything that was taken from him as a kid, and Bane knows that the more he hurts Gotham, the worse it hurts Bruce.
Bane's overall attitude also makes sense if we view him as a dark funhouse mirror version of Bruce. Bane baits the hook with something that is designed to appeal to Bruce's arrogance, his overconfidence. Bane makes himself an irresistible target, and as confident as Bruce is, Bane's at least twice as sure of himself. Any moment where Bruce gets the upper hand or surprises him at all, Bane seems shocked. He's that sure of himself. Bane is what Bruce would have been if he'd followed R'as Al Ghul's order during his initiation. He also turned his back on Al Ghul, though, for a different reason. When I see people talk about the relationship that Talia and Bruce as supposed to have, it's one of those disconnects where you just have to set aside the comics or the animated series. That's not the story that's being told. This Talia could never fall in love with Bruce Wayne. She despises him for killing her father. She may have been estranged from R'as Al Ghul, and the film certainly makes it sound like her love for Bane complicated things with her father, but she still loved him. Bane should hate R'as Al Ghul for excommunicating him, but his love for Miranda is more important to him. He's willing to extract vengeance in Al Ghul's name because it is important to her. Who knows? Maybe in a different version of this world, Bruce accepted his place with R'as and he and Talia do end up together. That's just not the story Nolan wanted to tell, and so the romantic longing that drives this horrifying, destructive plan has been rebuilt completely, reassigned.
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