Welcome to “Wait, What?,” a recurring column in which we examine confusing or incoherent details in crime movies.
I just saw The Dark Knight Rises (2012) for the first time. Yes, this year. I know some of you will want to dwell on the temporal aspect, but it’s not important. The important thing is that I have seen The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and I have a question.
It was strange to put on this film—with its clear plot arc about a grotesque madman hellbent on destroying as much of society’s infrastructure as he can—at this time of year, which is to say, during the weekend of Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration. Suddenly, I understand the escapist pleasures of the comic book movie, one in which there is a hero who can do something hands-on about the civically-inimical evildoers who revel in kneecapping the institutions that uphold modern civilization.
But, rather than grandiosely dwell on comparison or metaphor right now, I want to talk about something very specific that I noticed, and that has haunted me in the few days since I completed my viewing. I don’t know if my focusing on this trivial detail is a way to distract myself from my malaise or my feelings of futility at the state of the world. But I can tell you this… I think I may just have found a plot hole that can upend the entire film, let alone maybe the whole DC comic book tradition.
It concerns Bane (Tom Hardy), the enormous, bald supervillain with a bizarre gas mask strapped to his face. If he takes it off, or (more realistically in scenarios of hand-to-hand combat) its tiny pipes become dislodged, then he will collapse in terrible pain. Is he suffocating? Not exactly. The film’s director Christopher Nolan said that the mask “dispenses an anesthetic that keeps Bane’s pain controlled.” You see, he lives in debilitating chronic pain (there’s a backstory, but I won’t spoil it).
So, Bane cuts a striking figure… a large, bulbously-muscular man in army fatigues from the waist down and a bulletproof vest, with a black, muzzle-like apparatus squishing his glabrous, smooth head and cheeks, completly obstructing his nose and mouth from view.
But, okay… my question is… if Bane can’t take off his mask, then how does he shave? He’s clean-shaven. There’s no beard there. How does he shave? HOW DOES HE SHAVE?
Does he take the mask off and simply suffer complete, mind-blowing agony while he slaps some shaving cream on his cheeks and chin and runs a razor over them? Does he have an assistant shave him, in case the pain is too great that his hand would be shaking to such a degree that it would be too dangerous for him to run a blade around his jugular and then some?
But he has to take it off, to get that level of cheek-smoothness! He just has to!
Okay, let’s walk it back for a moment. Now, a few of you might say, maybe he has a beard under the mask. For this to be the case, he to have a beard that only covers his upper lip-and-chin region (the region of his face covered fully by the mask) and not his cheeks or neck. Which, sure, maybe he does. Having a little mustache and goatee under that thing seems itchy and uncomfortably warm, but sure, maybe he does. But still… that beard would grow! Sooner or later, he’d have tufts of beard puffing their way out of the crevices in that mask, and he’d have to at least remove the mask to TRIM the beard!
But that’s a pretty far-fetched scenario. Occam’s Razor suggests to us that there’s no way for him to make himself so clean-shaven without simply taking the mask off and shaving.
So does he? I never thought I’d be demanding the skincare-and-grooming routine of a Batman villain, but here we are.
I’m pretty sure Bane can take off his mask… and when he does, he does it for self-care. Kind of. Is it still self-care if you’re hurting while you’re doing it? “Beauty is pain,” the old adage says to us. Billy Crystal as Fernando Lamas on SNL says “it’s better to look good than feel good.” I think Bane just might agree.
