Whenever you see an interview with Dave Bautista, one thing that always comes to the forefront is his honesty and openness. The former professional wrestler has never been one for mincing his words, even if it involves going on record and blasting the all-powerful Disney over how they handled the James Gunn situation, which caused the actor to seriously consider quitting the Marvel Cinematic Universe altogether.
Bautista is just as frank about the parts he either wants or didn’t get as the ones he ends up snagging, having already revealed that he turned down the chance to reunite with Gunn on The Suicide Squad because Army of the Dead offered him the opportunity to work with Zack Snyder, play a lead role and be paid more money.
The 52 year-old has also made it clear on countless occasions that he wants to be Bane, even if Warner Bros. don’t have any concrete plans in store for the hulking villain at the moment. The Guardians of the Galaxy star once brought it up in a meeting with the studio when he was there to talk about a completely different project, and in a new interview, he’s gone into detail about why he’s so eager to get the job, and what makes him such a good fit for it.
“There are certain characters I’ve latched on to over the past 10, 20 years, and Bane was one of them. No discredit to Tom Hardy’s version of Bane, I love that performance, I loved that film. I’d just love a crack at it. I think I could bring an interesting twist to it and I think I could do the character justice. Not only in performance, but also in physicality. I’d love that role where I’d have to go back up to 320 pounds just to play this character, like that it would happen. I could play Bane in a way that’s not only menacing and ominous, but also freakishly intelligent. Bane would be the type of character that’s so menacing and so terrifying and so intelligent, he would hardly ever raise his voice.
He would not only be physically superior, he’d be mentally superior. I love the idea of the challenge of playing that character. I like when you can play a brute who’s not your predictable brute. Any big muscular guy can play the guy who is screaming, and growling, and yelling. But if you play a guy who is not only physically menacing but also soft-spoken, and even more terrifying when he’s speaking to you softly with a smile on his face, then that is a villain.”
You can’t argue with those sentiments, especially after Bautista surprised a lot of people with how moving his brief cameo in Blade Runner 2049 turned out to be, so he’s clearly got much more range than just being a muscle-head with good comic timing. You can guarantee he’d be furious if Bane gets rebooted without his involvement, but surely the boardroom would have him near the top of their list.