I would say, for me, the Joker’s the most attractive, because he has that spark to him. But what I love about Bane is that I can believe in him more. There’s a militaristic underpinning to him that we’ve given him in the film that I think Tom [Hardy] took and ran with in his performance that I find very credible. He’s just all about power and strength.

…My favorite aspect of the relationship between the Joker and Batman is this paradoxical relationship that we settled on: the Joker won’t kill Batman, Batman won’t kill the Joker, and they’re trapped in that paradox. That doesn’t lend itself to the arc of the films. The arc of this bigger story we’re trying to tell is that you get to this third film and Bane is a different kind of villain- what’s distinct about him from the Joker is that he has a plan. There’s no question he has a plan. We know exactly what his plan is. He states it in no uncertain terms in the trailer, which is that he’s going to destroy Gotham and then he’s going to kill Batman- or he’s going to let him die, rather. He’s going to break him, destroy his city, crush everything, grind it into dust. Which, again, takes us back to the Homeric epic villains where the whole idea was to raze the thing to the ground, then salt the fields and just completely annihilate.