First Full Theatrical Trailer for The Dark Knight Rises

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to be excited. The first full theatrical trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises has been released. That teaser from a few months ago wasn’t quite enough for me (I suppose that’s why they call it a “teaser”), but this one has me pretty amped up. The Dark Knight Rises comes out in July 2012 and will be the conclusion of Nolan’s ingenious take on the story of Batman. His versions transcend the superhero genre, adding levels of drama, intricacy, and intensity that we are not used to seeing in these types of films. It will be interesting to see if this final film will live up to the hype and be as good as The Dark Knight. That’s quite a difficult precedent to match, as the performance of the late Heath Ledger is what made that film so excellent. I feel that with a little less convolution in the plotlines (for instance, the entire story of Two-Face is told amidst numerous other events, and is done so in about an hour), I would have considered The Dark Knight to be among my favorite films of all time. As it is, the film has an extraordinarily high ranking on IMDB.

Anyway, to get back to The Dark Knight Rises, we might not get a Heath-Ledger-as-the-Joker-type performance, but I am very interested to see Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, Tom Hardy as Bane, and Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in other supporting roles. This is in addition to the awesome Christian Bale (besides his somewhat ridiculous Batman voice), Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman. And of course, there’s also the brilliance of Nolan.

I feel like I’ve yapped enough. I’ll let the trailer do the rest: