The latest and final installment in Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight Trilogy takes place eight years after The Dark Knight. Organized crime has for the most part been stopped due to the “Dent Act” and Gotham is in a state of peace. Batman has completely disappeared from the public eye after being accused of Harvey Dent’s death and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse. Wayne Enterprises is going under and Bruce Wayne is almost completely broke. A man named named John Daggett is attempting a takeover of the business and employing every tactic he possibly can to succeed.  Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and a young detective named John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are the only few people left on the local police force that still believe in The Batman. Blake talks to Wayne and is able to more or less figure out that he is indeed the Cape Crusader. He tries to convince him the city still needs The Dark Knight. It’s only after a man known as Bane (Tom Hardy) appears in Gotham and creates chaos that Batman once again makes his presence known. With Selina Kyle’s (Anne Hathaway) help, Bane is able to take control of Bruce Wayne/Batman’s weapon room, let loose all the prisoners in Blackgate Prison and create an army of followers for his cause. All that is left for Batman to do is to stop Bane at all costs and try to return order to Gotham City.

Wow, where to start. This incarnation of Batman has to be the best that I’ve ever seen and I’m absolutely positive that no one will argue with that statement one bit. After The Dark Knight was released and was critically loved I was very interested on how they were going to top it. I don’t know if I can say that they topped it but they made it equally fantastic. With Joker being an anarchist and “mental” type of villain the only other option would be to have someone go up against Batman that was the exact opposite. Bane is a man that is intelligent but uses brute force and physicality to get the results he wants. The other movie version of Bane that we saw showed him as a huge meat-headed luchador. Thanks to Nolan and the world that he created that is much more realistic (well as realistic as you can get) we didn’t see any of that. What we did see was a very formidable foe and physical match for Batman. Tom Hardy brought to the role exactly what was needed. The only thing that bothered me (but wasn’t horrible) was Bane’s accent. A lot of the people had something to say about him being very muffled but that wasn’t even it for me. Something about the tone of his voice that made it seem weird. Michael Caine was again great as Alfred Pennyworth. Nolan really showed the evolution of the relationship between the two. The father/son/best friend aspect really showed in one of the more emotional moments when Alfred tearfully resigned after pleading to Bruce to not put the cape and cowl back on. The inclusion of Selina Kyle aka Catwoman fit in perfectly as she brought in the sex appeal and kind of connected the dots between some of the characters. I honestly think she was the best Catwoman I’ve seen. Hathaway almost had a bit of a feline feel to the way she delivered her lines without being overly cheesy (Thank god she didn’t say “Puuuurrrfect” or anything like that). The John Blake character was rather interesting seeing as no one knew any more than him just being a straight laced cop. Joesph Gordon-Levitt really did wonders with this character. Halfway through the movie I knew Blake was going to be important but I wasn’t sure to what degree. SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t seen the movie already then stop here. When it was revealed at the end of the movie that John Blake’s birth name was Robin I thought that was a great an clever way of including him without including him. Nolan was smart enough to add him in but not bombard you with it to allow the character to develop on its own and not have the viewer keep thinking “He’s Robin, He’s Robin”. If you are a fan of the comics then you know that Robin’s name isn’t Robin so I felt like he did more or less as a nod to the fans. In the film’s finale it is shown that Bruce Wayne is apparently dead and leaves his estate to the local boys home. He also leaves coordinates for John Blake to an undisclosed location. When he reaches the destination its shown that it’s the Batcave and that Wayne wants Blake to continue on as Batman. It was a great ending to a phenomenal trilogy. They ended on a note that they had been mentioning throughout the series. Batman is more of a symbol than an actual person. The movie could’ve probably been trimmed down a bit and had a bit more of the Dark Knight himself but in the end it was another excellent movie from an excellent director. I don’t even have to say go see it because I’m sure by now all of you have……multiple times 🙂