The Dark Knight Rises

Knightfall

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Rated: PG-13  Intense sequences of violence, language, some sensuality and intense sequences of action.
Release Date: July 20, 2012
Runtime:  2 hours 45 minutes

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Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, David S. Goyer, based on characters created by Bob Kane
Cast:  Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Liam Neesn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Matthew Modine

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SYNOPSIS: After the Batman is held responsible for District Attorney Harvey Dent's death, the caped crusader disappears from the streets of Gotham. Some years later, when terrorist leader Bane takes over the city, Bruce Wayne again dons his cowl as the Batman to protect the city that had forsaken him.

REVIEW: Christopher Nolan, the man who wrote, directed and breathed new life into the man behind the mask and the scourge of the streets of Gotham City with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, returns for the last installment of his trilogy of films with The Dark Knight Rises (see the The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Road So Far for the full story of the first two films of the trilogy). With Jonathan Nolan (The Prestige, Memento) and David S. Goyer (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance), Christopher Nolan scribes a fully realized dramatic actioner from the characters created by Bob Kane that takes the Batman to the next level - as well as setting the bar higher for all other superhero films.

After the Batman (Christian Bale, The Flowers of War) and the new Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) defeat the two-faced Harvey Dent, they take it upon themselves to cast the Batman as the villain and leaving the memory of Harvey Dent as the shining example of the righteousness of good in the city of Gotham. Pursued by the Gotham Police Department, the Batman abruptly disappears from the city streets. In addition, Bruce Wayne becomes a recluse, not even bothering to take part in the goings-on of Wayne Enterprises. Some years pass and the city of Gotham, with Commissioner Gordon at the head of the police department and the Dent Act in full effect for the criminals of the city, has become a town with low crime rates and no villainous underbelly. As Gotham City enjoys a period of tranquility and peace under The Dent Act, a new threat emerges in the guise of Bane (Tom Hardy, This Means War), a terrorist who shares the cleansing vision of his one-time mentor Ra's Al Ghul Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson, Battleship) as the leader of the League of Assassins. When the mechanical masked Bane hatches a plot to cut off Gotham Island from the rest of the country by declaring marshal law under his rule, the Batman must come out of retirement to confront and attempt to defeat the skilled and vicious man. With only Commissioner Gordon, a new GPD detective named John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50), the devious alter ego of Selina Kyle as the leather-clad Catwoman (Ann Hathaway, Alice in Wonderland), Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman, Dolphin Tale), perspective business partner Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard, Contagion) and his trusty butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island), the Batman fights an uphill battle that may break him physically and spiritually.

Christopher Nolan completes his vision of the Dark Knight with The Dark Knight Rises, the third in his trilogy of Batman films. Where Tim Burton's vision turned Gotham City into an abstract landscape filled with darkness and a little camp, and where Joel Schumacher lit up that darkness with iridescent color and a cartooned version of the Caped Crusader and his trusty side kick Robin, Nolan grounds his Bruce Wayne and cowled hero into a reality-based Shakespearean tragic drama centered around real architecture and deep symbolism. Throughout his films, Nolan denotes the Batman as a symbol to the city's denizens. In Batman Begins, when the Scarecrow rules the city with the symbol (and gases) of fear, the Batman became a darker, more dangerous symbol of real fear is. In The Dark Knight, the Joker hopes to mar the shining symbol of the city by corrupting Harvey Dent and his accomplishments as the city's district attorney. Instead of letting the Joker win, the Batman became the villain to shoulder the weight of the city's fury against his alleged murderous atrocities. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne and his alter ego must face difficult decisions and dire consequences to become a symbol for the city again. Can he rise up against the more skilled Bane to save the city he cherishes, and save himself in the process?

In The Dark Knight Rises: Prologue, the first six minutes of film was marred with the unintelligible rants of the mechanically respirator Bane. In the finished product, there are no more issues with his speech for the most part. With an elegant, raspy accent, Bane stands above his minions as a dangerous and driven man - bent on the destruction of Gotham City as per his one-time mentor Ra's A Ghul. Where Heath Ledger's Joker was a brilliantly psychotic maniac, Tom Hardy's Bane is a powerful and driven menace. Is Bane a better villain than the Joker? I am sure that many would find it blasphemy to speak ill of Ledger's last role. The brilliance of Nolan manages to set the characterizations of each rogue so far apart in scope and mission as to not warrant a comparison. In the comics, the Joker has been a mainstay menace to the Batman since the caped crusader's beginnings. Bane, although turned into a silly trench coated henchman in Joel Schumacher’s effort for Batman and Robin, was a critical component in a surprising and successful Knightfall story arc to the destruction and eventual resurrection of the man who would be Batman.

Many believe that Nolan may spread the story too thin by the introduction of too many characters. Before Batman Begins, the thought was that using minor rogues in the form of Ra's Al Ghul and the Scarecrow would undermine the success of the film, but its success spurred a sequel. With Bane, Cat Woman, and the possible return of Ra's Al Ghul, the same critics thought the same dilution of story might occur. Although long with a runtime coming in at 165 minutes, Nolan crafts a solid and dramatic tale that redeems Bane as a major pivotal villain in the canon of the Batman's rogue gallery and history, and cements all of Nolan's films of the Dark Knight into a carefully crafted, interwoven and tragic tale that borders more on fine drama than superhero fare. If you are looking for a super-powered follow-up to The Avengers, look elsewhere. If you are looking for too-human drama, The Dark Knight Rises is for you. Nolan's trilogy could be considered a saga in three acts. Act 1 in Batman Begins is Bruce's birth from man into the flawed, anti-hero and protector of the city. Act 2 in The Dark Knight takes the Batman from anti-hero to hero to villain. Act 3 in The Dark Knight Rises is Bruce returning as the reviled anti-hero to fight against odds he cannot overcome.

The Dark Knight Rises is a continuation of the foundation of what Nolan and his writers had already built in the first two films. Adding in elements from the Knightfall story arc and a dash of No Man's Land story arc, The Dark Knight Rises is both a telling of the physical breaking of the Batman and the spiritual breaking of the Gotham's citizenry. Equal parts Bane and Bruce, the Batman takes somewhat of a back seat to both. There is plenty of story and action, but the cowled avenger is relegated to the end of the first act and the sensational climax last act. For lovers of the dark detective, some story elements will be more obvious than for non-readers. This first-hand knowledge will not deter from the story, but will serve to foreshadow surprises later on.

The cast is stellar as always. Christian Bale gets a chance to just be Bruce for a majority of the film, but still managed to engage his gravelly deep voice of the Batman when needed. While Tom Hardy is barely recognizable behind Bane's mechanical mask, he does exude a fierce obsession of the destruction of Gotham that mirrors that of Ra's Al Ghul machinations from the first film. Ann Hathaway's Selina Kyle/Catwoman returns to the skin tight bodysuit and the razor's edge of doing for herself and doing for others. New character John Blake, played by Gordon-Levitt, steps out from the shadows of the GPD to become a detective in his own right. Oldman is still perfect as the ragged, war-weary, and determined Commissioner Gordon.

Similar to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy where I enjoyed Spider-Man 2 the most with its established hero and superior villain, the performance of Ledger's Joker and the story in total stands out as the best of the Dark Knight trilogy for me. The Dark Knight Rises is a dramatic story with a sensational ending, working perfectly into the Nolan hero narrative. We can discuss and debate the merits of each film all day, but in the end all I can say is - 'why so serious?'.

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WORTH: Matinee and BluRay

The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Road So Far

Batman Begins

As a child playing on his parent's estate, Bruce Wayne falls through the rotting planks covering an abandoned well. Young Bruce develops a phobia of bats because of the cavern filled with them. Later, young Bruce attends a show with his mother and father. When Bruce is reminded and scared of the bats from the cavern, his parents take him out of the theater into an alley. Once there, a mugger named Joe Chill who guns down both Bruce’s mother and father, leaving Bruce alive as a witness. Bruce is left in the guardianship of the Wayne's trusted butler Alfred Pennyworth. Joe Chill is caught and tried for his crimes.

When Bruce is an adult, he learns that Joe Chill is being offered parole in exchange for information concerning the Carmine Falcone and the Falcone crime family. Still haunted and bitter from the brutal slaying of his youth, Bruce enters the courthouse with the intentions of killing Chill. Unfortunate for the satisfaction of his vengeance, Bruce's assassination attempt is left incomplete when Chill is killed by one of Falcone's own men. Feeling cheated, Bruce confronts Falcone himself. But Bruce is no match for the experienced and brutal Falcone and is tossed out of Falcone's establishment.

Bruce immediately leaves Gotham City by freighter in defeat. In his travels, Bruce looks to learn the ways of the criminal underworld, both strategically and physically. Ending up in a Bhutanese prison, Bruce must use his skills to ward out some of the other inmates. He is found by a man named Ducard who offers Bruce an out to his current incarceration, pledging to train Wayne as a ninja of the League of Shadows under the tutelage of Ra's al Ghul. As he completes the relentless and brutal physical and mental training, Bruce discovers that the League has plans to liberate Gotham City from its corruption by destroying the city altogether. Bruce battles against the ninjas of the League, burning down the League temple. He kills the ninjas and Ra's al Ghul, saving his friend Ducard and leaving him in a village at the base of the mountain.

Confident in his abilities, Bruce returns to Gotham with his trusted servant Alfred. Publicly posing as a billionaire playboy, Bruce returns to the Wayne estate and the head of the family's technology ad defense company Wayne Enterprises. At the company Wayne is met by the current CEO William Earle, who looks to take the family company public and has no love for the return of the prodigal son. More cordial, Lucius Fox takes Bruce on a tour of the facilities, introducing Bruce to a warehouse full of research and development projects started by Wayne Enterprises but shelved.

Along with Alfred, Bruce starts to create the persona of the Batman, based on Bruce's childhood fear of the winged, furry rodent. Assembling a base of operations under Wayne Manor in the caverns, Bruce uses his fortune and access to experimental Wayne Enterprises technology to outfit vehicles and a suit of body armor to take back the streets of Gotham.

As Batman, Bruce starts to dismantle Carmine Falcone's criminal organization from the streets. He intercepts a key drug shipment of Falcone's, leading to the arrest of Carmine Falcone by Sgt. Jim Gordon and the Gotham Police department. While the Batman starts to strike fear in the thugs of the underworld of Gotham, an experimental Wayne Enterprises "Microwave Emitter" is stolen from a cargo ship.

Awaiting trail, Carmine Falcone and his criminal associates are declared mentally unfit to stand trial for their crimes by Dr. Jonathan Crane, sending them all to Arkham Asylum for observation. What the police and lawyers do not know is that Crane is secretly using the Falcone network to import and traffic a hallucinogenic drug of his own design. As the alter-ego villain The Scarecrow, Crane exposes Carmine to the aerosol, driving the mob boss mad.

Investigating the strange happenings of Falcone's criminal enterprises and the dangerous drug, the Batman is exposed to the drug and is driven to frightening visions and hallucinations. The Batman is rescued by Alfred and is given an antidote for the drug raging through his bloodstream. He creates two more vials of antidote and returns to the streets.

Rachel Dawes, a childhood friend of Bruce and assistant district attorney for Gotham, blind-sided by the derailed prosecution of Falcone and his associates, discovered while speaking to Dr. Crane that he has been dumping his toxins into the Gotham water supply. Before she can react, Crane exposes her to the toxic aerosol. The Batman rescues Rachel and inoculates her with one of the vials of antidote. The Batman uses Crane's own toxin against him and uses its hallucinogenic properties to interrogate The Scarecrow into revealing that the toxin is harmless in liquid form, but potent if inhales.

During a birthday party in his honor at Wayne Manor, Ducard confronts Bruce. He reveals in private that he is the real Ra's al Ghul. Renewing their plans to destroy the city with The Scarecrow's toxin-infiltrated city water supply and the stolen microwave emitter, Bruce gets rid of his party guests before Ra's al Ghul and his ninjas set fire to the mansion. Barely escaping, Bruce is rescued by Alfred and suits up as The Batman to go after Ghul and the device on an elevated train traveling to the center of the city.

Batman meets up with Sgt. Gordon and hands over the keys to the Tumbler while he pursues Ra's on the train. As the train nears the center of the city, The Batman and Ra's battle, The Batman escapes on the deteriorating train just as Gordon and the Tumbler crash into one of the main support members of the train, leaving Ra's to die in the inferno aftermath of the train explosion.

The Batman becomes a beacon and hero of vigilante justice to Gotham. Rachel makes the decision that she cannot live for and love the double identities of both the man Bruce Wayne and the anti-hero Batman. CEO William Earle completes the process to start publicly trading Wayne Enterprises, bought up by several companies and parties that provide a controlling interest of Wayne Enterprises back to Wayne. He promptly fires Earle and replaces him with Lucius Fox. With the city safe once more, Sgt. Gordon is promotes to Lieutenant in the department, building a bat signal on the roof of the precinct. Batman appears while Gordon is on the roof, where he mentions to The Batman that he may have saved the city but he has also incited the introduction of new costumed crazies, namely a man who leaves Joker cards at crime scenes. The Batman promises to investigate and disappears into the darkness.

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The Dark Knight

In Gotham City, The Batman protects its citizens and its streets. But even as The Batman cleans up the local thugs and crime families, a new criminal is making a name for himself.

The Joker and a group of accomplices rob a mob-owned bank. As each thug completes his task on the job, the next accomplice kills him. When the money is ready to be hauled into a bus that crashed into the bank, the last robber kills the driver and is revealed to be the Joker.

After the Joker leaves the scene of the crime, Lt. Jim Gordon and the Batman arrive to survey the damage and sift out clues. Several stacks of traceable money are all that's left of the contents of the vault, left intentionally by the Joker and his crew. Gordon and the Batman decide to include the new district attorney Harvey Dent in their plan to get their hands on the mobs' slush money.

With more of their laundered money disappearing to the likes of the Joker, mob bosses Sal Maroni, Gambol, and the Chechen meet to discuss their next moves. They discover via videoconference that their accountant Lau has fled to Hong Kong and has hidden the remainder of their money in accounts on the Asian continent. After the video conference, the Joker interrupts the meeting and poses an offer to kill the Batman for half of the mobs' money, pointing out that having their money on mainland China will not deter the Batman from getting his hands on Lau. The mob heads laugh at the Joker's offer and disband the meeting.

The Batman does indeed make his way to Hong Kong and infiltrates Lau's impenetrable high rise tower, using a visiting Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox as a cover to introduce a virus into the structure's mainframe and allowing the Batman to overpower several of Lau's bodyguard's and security detail. Before more security can reach Lau, the Batman hoists Lau out of the building and reels them both into a passing cargo plane headed back to Gotham.

Unknown thugs visit mob boss Gambel with a body bag to collect the bounty for the Joker. To Gambel's surprise the Joker is not dead, rising from the body bag to kill Gambel and take control of his men.

Playing a new game, the Joker gives an ultimatum to the citizens of Gotham City. In his statement, the Joker promises that people will die until the Batman is unmasked and his identity publicly known. The Joker targets and succeeds in killing Commissioner Loeb with poison from his stash of whiskey, and the judge of the mob trials with a car bomb. When Joker and his men crash a fundraiser to kill Harvey Dent, Bruce hides Dent before the killing is done. Rachel Dawes, who Dent is seeing romantically, is also targeted by the Joker but is rescued and looked after by Bruce's butler Alfred Pennyworth. During the memorial for Commissioner Loeb, one of the Joker's men dressed as a policeman takes a shot at the mayor, killing Lt. Jim Gordon instead.

Harvey Dent hunts down the man who killed Gordon and interrogates him. Flipping a coin, Dent gives the killer an ultimatum to tell him what he wants to know or be killed. Before Dent can pull the trigger, the Batman interrupts and warns Dent that the district attorney must not do anything that will tarnish the good that he has done in office thus far. The Batman then offers to reveal his identity at a press conference the next day.

During the press conference, Harvey Dent tells the reporters that he is really the Batman. While the journalists stand in shock, Dent is put into protective custody and readied for transport. Rachel Dawes wonders what Dent is trying to prove, but says her goodbyes before he is put into the back of the armored vehicle. While in transit, the police convey is ambushed at several points by the Joker and his men. The Batman intervenes on his motorcycle-like Bat-Pod and brings the Joker to his knees in time for a not dead Lt. Gordon to put the Joker under arrest. In the melee, though, both Rachel and Harvey Dent disappear.

While the Joker is put into detention, Gordon is unceremoniously promoted to Commissioner. When the Joker proves more than a match for a ranking detective, he is left in a room with the Batman. Although beaten by the Batman, the Joker remains amused and unfazed. The Joker reveals that both the missing district attorney Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes are in separate buildings filled with explosives. Faced with the choice of only being able to save one of them, the Batman arrives at Dent's location moments before the building blows up, saving Dent but not before one side of his face is brutally burned and scarred. Rachel is killed in another explosion before anyone can reach her. In the meantime, the Joker escapes custody when another detainee explodes from a bomb lodged in his belly.

The Joker visits the recovering Dent in the hospital, looking to persuade Dent to take revenge on the people who were responsible for Rachel's death and the people who failed to save her. Using his charred two-headed coin, Dent decides to exact his revenge. The Joker blows up the hospital and escapes with hostages. While Dent tracks down and kills some of those he considers responsible for Rachel's death, the Joker announces that he has rigged two ferries with explosive. One of the ferries carries Arkham Asylum inmates and the other Gotham citizens, both set to detonate at midnight unless one of the ferries passengers take it upon themselves to detonate the other ferry. The Batman uses secret Wayne Enterprises telecommunication technology to track down the location of the Joker, enlisting a reluctant Lucius Fox to assist him. While he agrees to help the Batman, Fox declares that he will resign as CEO of Wayne Enterprises immediately afterward. The Batman locates the Joker and his men on a construction site overlooking the harbor, and engages them. The Batman must also fend off Gordon's SWAT team since they are unaware that the hostages are dressed as the Joker's men and his accomplices are disguised as hostages. The Batman battles the Joker's dogs and finally succeeds in capturing the Joker. The mad man claims to have won as he counts down to midnight and the eventual explosion on the water. When neither ferry explodes due to both sets of passengers deciding to not detonate the other, Joker's smile turns upside down into a frown.

Pursuing Dent, Gordon is lured to the building where Rachel dies. He discovers that his wife and son are hostages and that Gordon must choose who will live and who will die. The Batman confronts Dent who flips his marred coin to learn his fate. With one toss, Dent shoots Batman in the stomach. With a second toss, Dent spares himself from the barrel of his gun. Dent tosses the coin one last time to determine what will happen to Gordon's son. Before the coin comes down, the Batman, who wears bulletproof body armor, tackles Dent and falls off the edge of the building. Dent is killed, but Batman makes Gordon promise that he will tell the citizens of Gotham that the Batman was responsible for the murders that Dent committed, keeping Dent as the symbol of hope for the city.

The Batman races off on the Batpod and the manhunt after him escalate. Commissioner Gordon destroys the Bat Signal and continues on with the work of protecting the city.

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The Dark Knight Rises Prologue

Click here to learn more about Bane's comic origins!

The Warner Bros. logo and the Legendary logo displays on a black ice background, followed by the glacial cracks forming the Batman icon.

Commissioner Jim Gordon is heard as a voice over as the logos fade to black. The next scene fades in to show Commissioner Gordon outside at a podium touting his remembrance and belief in what Harvey Dent meant for him and stood for the city of Gotham. Pictures of Harvey Dent adorn the stage beside and behind the podium. Gordon moves away from the podium and sits down. The scene fades to black.

The next scene springs to white as we see a Lear jet on a desert mountain tarmac, a Land Rover bouncing on a dirt road toward the plane. In the back seat of the vehicle are three hooded figures in restraints. Leonid Pavel is led from the vehicle to who seems to be a CIA field agent. Another agent informs the special agent in charge that the hooded prisoners are believed to be associated with the terrorist Bane. All are led onto the plane in preparation for take off.

As the plane flies low over the rolling hills and jagged rock outcroppings, the CIA agent tells the prisoners that the flight manifest only has room for his staff, the guards, Pavel and one of the prisoners. If one of them tells him about the terrorist known as Bane, he will let that snitch stay on the plane. The other two are destined to be thrown out of the open side door into the empty air. Neither of the first two hooded prisoners say a word as they are interrogated with the threat of a jump without a parachute. The third hooded prisoner speaks up in a gravelly synthesized voice. The CIA agent pulls off the hood to reveal the prisoner is Bane himself. Talking with a mechanized voice modulator, he confronts the agent.

As Bane does rants, a multi-prop cargo plane flies in over the Lear jet. The jet stream from the cargo plane bucks the Lear around in its wake. The rear cargo ramp opens and four black-clad soldiers repel out of the opening, into the air and descending to the Lear. They land hard on both sides of the plane over the wings and start shooting the CIA guards through the windows. Catching the agents by surprise, they attach powerful magnets or spikes to the side of the Lear's fuselage. The more powerful cargo plane, now connected to the smaller plane, pulls the Lear out of its flight path and up-ends it in mid-flight. The Lear's wings, from the cargo plane's jet stream and the air speed, shear off the craft completely. The Lear is left looking more like an up-ended missile than an airplane. Meanwhile, the agents are thrown to the front wall between the cabin and the cockpit. Eventually they are all killed. Bane's soldiers on the outside of the plane add det cord to the hull and blow out the tail of the plane.

A body bag descends from the cargo plane and into the now open hull. The bag is open to reveal a seemingly dead soldier. Bane sticks a IV feed tube in Pavel's arm to start the extract of blood from his arm to a blood bag, and possibly to the soldier in the body bag. A quick camera shot makes it look like someone is trying to perform CPR on the dead gray man. As Bane's extract team ascends their ropes back to the cargo plane, the last soldier starts to tie up for his escape. Bane tells him he is to stay behind. As he unties himself from the gear, the soldier seems to revel in the sacrifice Bane has asked him to make for the cause. Bane ties Pavel to his ascent rig. The plane suddenly falls away to earth as Bane and Pavel are pulled back to the cargo plane. The scene fades to black.

The Dark Knight Rises Prologue

Knightfall

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, characters from Bob Kane
Cast: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Liam Neeson, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine

SYNOPSIS: Murderous villain Bane arrives in Gotham City, bent on destroying the myth and the body of the Batman.

REVIEW: The DC Universe has only improved with the addition of Christopher Nolan's vision of the Batman and the city of Gotham. In Batman Begins, the writer and director remade the image of the Bat with a new origin of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) as he loses his family to a mugger's bullets and the rise of the Batman as the scourge of villainy throughout the alleyways and dark corners of Gotham. Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson), the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), and an underworld mob boss named Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). In The Dark Knight, Nolan and Bale return to find the citizens of Gotham demanding for the head of the Batman, all the while he, Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), and the district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) look to solve the riddle of his latest and craziest adversary, the Joker (Heath Ledger). Soon in the heat of 2012, Bruce and the Batman will return with the closing entry of the trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises.

It is called Operation Early Bird. Across the country, hidden clues and a viral campaign led the intuitive among us to the www.operationearlybird.com website. On the site's homepage a countdown clock wound down to an inevitable conclusion. Once the last number turned into a zero, the counter gave way to a map of the country with glowing dots scattered across the nation. Upon closer inspection, each dot represented an exclusive showing of The Dark Knight Rises prologue. Servers soon crashed, and browser sessions timed out. And once the fog and bandwidth cleared, every showing across North America was sold out.

For those who hunger for vengeance in the darkness, the summary of the prologue follows below.

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The Warner Bros. logo and the Legendary logo displays on a black ice background, followed by the glacial cracks forming the Batman icon. 

Commissioner Jim Gordon is heard as a voice over as the logos fade to black. The next scene fades in to show Commissioner Gordon outside at a podium touting his remembrance and belief in what Harvey Dent meant for him and stood for the city of Gotham. Pictures of Harvey Dent adorn the stage beside and behind the podium. Gordon moves away from the podium and sits down. The scene fades to black.

The next scene springs to white as we see a Lear jet on a desert mountain tarmac, a Land Rover bouncing on a dirt road toward the plane. In the back seat of the vehicle are three hooded figures in restraints. Leonid Pavel is led from the vehicle to who seems to be a CIA field agent. Another agent informs the special agent in charge that the hooded prisoners are believed to be associated with the terrorist Bane. All are led onto the plane in preparation for take off.

As the plane flies low over the rolling hills and jagged rock outcroppings, the CIA agent tells the prisoners that the flight manifest only has room for his staff, the guards, Pavel and one of the prisoners. If one of them tells him about the terrorist known as Bane, he will let that snitch stay on the plane. The other two are destined to be thrown out of the open side door into the empty air. Neither of the first two hooded prisoners say a word as they are interrogated with the threat of a jump without a parachute. The third hooded prisoner speaks up in a gravelly synthesized voice. The CIA agent pulls off the hood to reveal the prisoner is Bane himself. Talking with a mechanized voice modulator, he confronts the agent. 

As Bane does rants, a multi-prop cargo plane flies in over the Lear jet. The jet stream from the cargo plane bucks the Lear around in its wake. The rear cargo ramp opens and four black-clad soldiers repel out of the opening, into the air and descending to the Lear. They land hard on both sides of the plane over the wings and start shooting the CIA guards through the windows. Catching the agents by surprise, they attach powerful magnets or spikes to the side of the Lear's fuselage. The more powerful cargo plane, now connected to the smaller plane, pulls the Lear out of its flight path and up-ends it in mid-flight. The Lear's wings, from the cargo plane's jet stream and the air speed, shear off the craft completely. The Lear is left looking more like an up-ended missile than an airplane. Meanwhile, the agents are thrown to the front wall between the cabin and the cockpit. Eventually they are all killed. Bane's soldiers on the outside of the plane add det cord to the hull and blow out the tail of the plane.

A body bag descends from the cargo plane and into the now open hull. The bag is open to reveal a seemingly dead soldier. Bane sticks a IV feed tube in Pavel's arm to start the extract of blood from his arm to a blood bag, and possibly to the soldier in the body bag. A quick camera shot makes it look like someone is trying to perform CPR on the dead gray man. As Bane's extract team ascends their ropes back to the cargo plane, the last soldier starts to tie up for his escape. Bane tells him he is to stay behind. As he unties himself from the gear, the soldier seems to revel in the sacrifice Bane has asked him to make for the cause. Bane ties Pavel to his ascent rig. The plane suddenly falls away to earth as Bane and Pavel are pulled back to the cargo plane. The scene fades to black.

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The next minute or two shows a montage of scenes of Batman, Catwoman, the Batpod, a new aerial vehicle, and more... ending with Bane walking away with a cracked Batman helmet that he tosses away nonchalantly.

The six to seven minutes of prologue blazed by more less it was three to four minutes. The action was quick and inspired. In a compressed span of film experience, Bane's reach and audacity was fully established. Batman will have his fists full if he intends on going man to man against Bane. My only complaint is that Bane's mechanized voice was difficult to decipher at times. Otherwise, that six minutes proves that Nolan is going to take us on a hell of a ride next Summer.

Audiences were given an advanced look at the film's prologue prior to its July 20th, 2012 opening next Summer. Christopher Nolan states, in a Warner Bros. Pictures news release, that "Our experience on 'The Dark Knight' shooting and projecting IMAX 15 perf 65mm/70mm film was inspiring. The immersive quality of the image goes beyond any other filmmaking tool available, and in revisiting Gotham, we were determined to shoot even more of the movie in this unique format."