Of the many horrifying things about Donald Trump’s inauguration speech, one of the weirdest was its similarity to the speech Bane makes in The Dark Knight Rises about taking power from the corrupt elites and returning it to the people. Of course, Bane was lying and secretly intended to kill everyone, but President Trump obviously isn’t planning anything so nefarious. That would imply that he actually plans things, instead of just blindly lashing out at whatever upsets him.
With the internet having a good laugh about this Trump/Bane stuff, The Hollywood Reporter tracked down Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan, the writer and artist who co-created the iconic villain for 1993’s “Knightfall” storyline in the Batman comics with writer Doug Moench, to see how they felt about this. Surprisingly, not only do they both agree that Trump has some of the qualities of a Batman villain, but they also both voted for him and think he’ll do a good job.
Dixon and Nolan were both impressed with Trump’s speech, but Dixon in particular says Trump is like a Batman villain “in many ways.” He doesn’t say what those ways are, though, which leaves us to wonder if he was talking about Trump’s crazy hair, his obsessive nature, his evil business empire, the confusing way he speaks, his knack for terrifying people, or the fact that he has the ability to control plants and dreams of using that power to wipe out all of mankind.
The most interesting part of the interview, though, comes when THR asks Dixon and Nolan what kind of president they think Bane would be. Now, keeping in mind that they both support Trump and agree that he’s a bit like a Batman villain, try to find the point in this quote that would not apply to both men:
The guy likes being the top of the heap and he likes staying there. He’d be an all-term president and probably serve as vice president and most of the cabinet, too. Except secretary of agriculture. Bane has no interest in where his food comes from. Only that it’s hot when it arrives. Or someone will pay.
That’s from Dixon, and here’s Nolan’s similar response:
Bane serves Bane. He wouldn’t be a leader in any democratic sense but rather a dictator in total control. He would kill off all of Congress as well as the Supreme Court. No need for those other pesky branches of government. I would not care to live under a Bane presidency. But in the world of Bane there is also the Batman. So we have nothing to worry about.
Sadly, the real world does not have Batman, but it does have people who can recognize the evil in “Bane serves Bane” while still supporting Trump, so that’s something.