A Peek at the New Batman Film: Get a First Look at Tom Hardy as Bane in 'The Dark Knight Rises'

I had almost totally forgotten until now that "The Dark Knight" pioneered viral marketing in a big way. Back in 2007, people would get alerts from the Internet about hidden gadgets in major cities, cakes were getting delivered with telephones inside of them, Joker armies swarmed Comic Con, and everyone was clicking things thousands of times to get a new image of Heath Ledger as the Joker. And I remembered that it was kind of exciting at the time. You know, in 2007.

But it's 2011 now, and if today's a genuine indication that we're in store for more of the same over the next year, that just seems kind of sad. From the title on down the line, Warner Brothers seems to be leaning on the success of "The Dark Knight" in a big way, and while a failed marketing scheme is no worry to me, I do hope the film doesn't reflect the same crutch.

So here we are - today, WB launched TheDarkKnightRises.com, and while all you get right now is some poorly-mastered chanting, there's also another little site slowly revealing an image of Tom Hardy as Bane. How did anyone figure this out? I don't have the slightest idea. But if you tweet with the hashtag #thefirerises, a tiny little version of your avatar will be added to this site, and collectively those images will form a mosaic that looks something like Tom Hardy as Bane. Again, no clue how all this started; it merely is.

Now, if, like me, you don't really want to sit around and hit "refresh" all day, someone at Batman-News.com did some digging around the source code (no, not the Gyllenhaal one) and found the full image for all to see:

Yep, pretty much looks like what Bane would look like in a film coming out in 2012.

He still has the staples - strong guy with a leather mask - but they freed him of all those bothersome tights and flashy colors. His mask also has more definition; while the comic book character pretty much wore a luchador mask and called it a day, Tom Hardy has a whole Darth Vader-esque snout thing going on there. And...hoses? I guess we'll just have to wait until 2012 to find out.

What do you think of the image of Tom Hardy as Bane? Creepy enough for ya?