A rumor regarding Christopher Nolan’s anticipated The Dark Knight Rises surfaced online, though it’s hard to determine whether the piece of information is a serious plot spoiler or just common sense based on all of the facts we already know about the sequel. Needless to say, this is spoilerific news and if you want to be completely surprised by potential plot developments in Nolan’s third Batman adventure, it’s bets that you just click away to another Cinema Blend story that doesn’t involve the Dark Knight or his brutal adversaries.
Final warning...
Still with us? OK, here it goes. From the minute Nolan revealed that Tom Hardy would play Bane in Rises, Batman fans have speculated that Nolan wants to break Batman’s back … only to have the Caped Crusader build himself back up (or “rise”) to reclaim Gotham from the muscle-bound criminal. Now why on earth would they think such a thing? Well, because it’s the 1993 storyline of a popular Batman run known as “Knightfall,” where Bane shattered the spine of a physically worn out Batman, and it’s pretty much the only story Bane is known for, except for his presence in Joel Schumacher’s hideous Batman & Robin (though the less we say about that, the better).
Now we’re seeing the first confirmation that Bane in fact WILL break Batman’s back in Rises, courtesy of a rumor posted on Comic Book Movie. The site says it's a rumor from a “completely reliable source,” and that they wouldn’t really advance this news if it didn’t come from this particular mole. Again, we kind of assumed that this was a possibility with Bane on the scene, so if a site is going ahead and confirming it, it’s not really a stretch of the imagination.
Truthfully, I would have liked to see Nolan go in a different direction with Bane, a direction we haven’t seen in the comics already. And now I’m wondering -- if this rumor is true -- how much time Christian Bale will have to spend as a paralyzed, wheelchair-bound Bruce Wayne in the sequel. Will Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman protect Gotham in Batman’s absence? Is this where Joseph Gordon-Levitt fits in? So many questions. We’ll have answers a little over a year from now when The Dark Knight Rises opens on July 20, 2012.
