Yes it was

All of the research for this movie was spent watching Looney Tunes with his 5 year old godson, eating Lucky Charms and you know, just basically workshopping some ideas together.

In the comics Bane was plainly a way of putting an actual physical threat to confront Batman. Most of the pantheon of Batman villains were either criminal masterminds who wouldn't last 10 seconds in a real fight, or villains who used tons of technology to face Batman. Bane was the first major villain who was a combination of being super-intelligent but also a real physical threat to Batman, a situation he had never faced. The whole idea of the Knightfall story was just to play with the idea of "what if Batman actually lost to a villain for once and the consequence was Gotham gets fucked over massively?"
I actually don't hate the Schumacher Batman films....I look at them as silly, pulp entertainment clearly trying to ape the TV show rather than the graphic novels, but they really did fuck up Bane by reducing him to a silly retard who just follows orders and is generally comic relief.

Yeah, Bane /can/ be a pretty awesome character. I mean Batman's all about the villains, and Bane's a fantastic setup: Here's a guy with none of Bruce Wayne's billions, none of his education--a guy who had every single possible disadvantage in the world thrown at him--and the result is someone who is (ideally) both a physical and intellectual match for Batman.

I wouldn't say he was the first to be both smart and physically powerful, Ra's Al Ghul did both quite well. Where Ra's Al Ghul falls apart, however, is that he has things actually invested in his position and Batman can actually take those things away. Bane doesn't have anything to lose.

That said, having a character whose sole reason to commit crime is to defeat Batman might be where the character falls apart. Joker has the whole homoerotic element to him, and the Riddler conflates Batman with his own abusive father, but Bane just wants to defeat Batman so he can be the guy who defeated Batman. I personally find it to be a weak motivation.

The only villain in the Rogue's Gallery who actually *deserves* to be victorious is the Penguin, and largely because he's a genuine criminal who is in the game entirely to enrich himself, is not insane, knows the risks of being a criminal, is usually played (nowadays) as a cripple/social outcast, is, admittedly, very smart and really just has a dedication to being alive AS a criminal. I wish somebody would just write the character for what he is and make that enough. Yeah, he's a fat guy who wears a top hat and commits crimes, but there's a sort of sincerity to him that most of the other villains just don't have. That sincerity could go a long way in the hands of a competent writer.

Comic book Bane is a terrific villain. As originally written, he's practically as smart and capable as Bruce Wayne, but lacks his resources. He makes up for it by being ridiculously strong and absolutely ferocious: he grew up in a hellish south american prison, but proved to be so brilliant a tactician that he didn't need to bother escaping: he took over the place and then just walked out the door. Mentally, though, he's still living by prison rules, and sees Gotham City as just another place where he has to prove himself the alpha dog. That's why he goes after Batman.

The problem with Bane is that most people look at him, see that he's strong, and assume that that's his entire character. But it's worth mentioning that when he defeats Batman in Knightfall, he does it by outsmarting and outmaneuvering him. He only uses his strength to deliver the final blow.

Right. Again, maybe it's brilliantly written, but when I hear, "he's super strong but also really smart and he grew up in a prison and he's angry and he had nothing given to him," I hear a fanfiction character. In the broad strokes, Bane is not terribly interesting.

I'm just going to defend the Penguin in pretty much any given context.

Bane's motivation is not JUST beating Batman; he also thinks that Bruce Wayne is his half-brother and that Wayne's father abandoned Bane and thus the Wayne family should be punished, or something like that. Regardless, I'm glad that DKR has made Bane into a memorable, interesting film villain that rises above his continuously dumb portrayal in most Batman media. He came off fairly unscathed in the original cartoon, but pretty much everywhere else he's a dumb animal.

yea, I know!

Be sure to ask for a lot of money.

yea.... I know...

This looks like the only entertaining post-Adam West batman movie to me.