Hathaway gives a great performance, but the film is largely at a loss with what to do with her other than have her be snarky, sneaky, and sexy. All it adds up to is, “Class conflict is a thing!” but since blockbuster movies typically don’t portray economic inequality or poverty in any remotely real way, we basically have Selina Kyle ( Anne Hathaway) as a stand-in for the anger of the 99% and there’s no follow through. The film’s faux populism serves as a more of distraction than a concrete theme. The only reason we remember Bane is because Hardy gave him a goofy voice. Setting aside that Bane’s true plan is to new nuke Gotham, he’s a largely uninteresting antagonist because he has no real dichotomy with Batman. It’s not enough to talk about giving Gotham back to the people when the same person is blowing up bridges and taking the city hostage. He’s a faux populist at best, but populism manifests in the relationship between demagogue and audience. Bane, on the other hand, simply wants to create chaos but give Gothamites a false sense of hope. This provided a good conflict with Batman ( Christian Bale), who believed that his home wasn’t beyond saving. His aspiration was to restore Gotham because the city had become too corrupt. What does Bane want beyond destroying Gotham? Even Ra’s al Ghul ( Liam Neeson) said that he felt destroying Gotham was as a cleansing fire.

The long dark difficulties