Having spent years telling anybody who’d listen that it was his dream role – and one that he’d been actively campaigning to play for years – it was a cruel twist of irony for Dave Bautista to admit that the ascension of his Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn to co-CEO of DC Studios had ended his chances of playing Bane.
It’s a crying shame, when the actor has the requisite physicality and a burning passion for the character, but at 54 years old he admitted that he’s simply too long in the tooth. Bane will almost certainly appear in a live-action movie for the first time since The Dark Knight Rises sooner rather than later, but Blue Beetle director Angel Manuel Soto won’t be at the helm, either.
He did pitch it, though, with the filmmaker revealing new details to The Playlist about how he planned to reinvent the villain who broke the Bat.
“As far as Bane goes, it feels like he’s very misunderstood. We are used to being introduced to the world in movies as villains. It’s almost a given that we’re born that way. When we talk about the history of Latin America, nobody dares to question what happened before. Much like Carapax, Bane’s a product of his environment. He is, in his own right, a hero. That’s how I pitched it.
DC appreciated it, but they called me in because they wanted Blue Beetle. While I was working on Carapax, I thought, I don’t know if I’ll ever make a Bane movie. Let me take what I loved about Bane, about the backstory that I wanted to explore, and give it to Carapax. It’s the history of the Caribbean, the Antilles, a history that’s been brushed off. I think that what Bane represents is the history of interventionism in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
It’s safe to say we’ll be seeing Bane one way or another, but with an actor and director now off the table despite their best efforts, the iconic antagonist remains entirely up for grabs.