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Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, the hardline Dent Act has packed the prisons to bursting and all but eradicated organised crime. Batman hasn’t been seen since. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is now a Howard Hughes-esque recluse, holed up in the east wing of a rebuilt Wayne Manor.

Alfred (Michael Caine) wants him to get out, get some air, get a life. But when Bruce is eventually tempted out on the town by sexy thief Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), the breeze that wafts his hair is the frontrunner of a gale.

A storm looms, poised to blow Gotham’s doors down. A storm that may even prove too strong for a bat to fly in. A storm called Bane (Tom Hardy).

Comic-book Batfans know all about the man-mountain baddie called Bane – a pumped-up, uber-villain packing brawn and brains in equal measure, cast here as a calculating terrorist, and perhaps Batman’s most fearsome adversary yet.

If writer/producer/director Christopher Nolan felt the avalanche of anticipation heaped upon this third instalment of his take on the Caped Crusader, it’s only spurred him to greatness. With all the qualities of its predecessors, so much to revel in and so few flaws, The Dark Knight Rises is a crowning triumph.

At once familiar and new, this is the power of the true sequel – not just cashing-in, but completing a story founded on the knowledge and investment we’ve already made.

And while Nolan will, rightly, receive many of the plaudits, like the Dark Knight himself, he’s far from a one-man band. There are Academy Award-winners galore behind the camera, and not a few in front of it too.
 

Commanding great actors for even the smallest supporting or cameo roles is one of Nolan’s major advantages, and he roots his story in relationships that are a joy to watch.

Alfred teases Bruce with playful wit and genuine emotion, Bruce joshes with Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), gets intense with Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and flirty with wealthy board-member Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard). Fellow Nolan alumni Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Hardy really make their mark too.

So it’s as much about the intimate and the personal as it is about the wow-factor of the action and spectacle, and with such fine players, Nolan can keep his script clipped and efficient. Which means an awful lot of story can be told in the two and half hour runtime.
 

It would have an epic feel in and of itself, but as it rounds out this three-film Batman legend – smashing crime, thriller, fantasy, action genres (and more) together as it goes, TDKR is immersion into an absorbing, fascinating world. And surely bound for glory.

Which is good not just for Nolan, Bale, et al (and Warner Bros’ swelling bank account), but for us and cinema in general, because it raises the bar of what’s possible. It raises the level of what we expect and demand, even from a film that on the surface looks like a summer blockbuster.

The Dark Knight Rises is so much more than that, of course. It’s movie-making at its finest: supreme technical expertise in so many departments, storytelling of a masterful degree, and – in short – utterly satisfying.