Warner Bros.
Here's the good news: The first teaser trailer for director Christopher Nolan's third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, has hit the Internet -- and it certainly is attention-grabbing (if very brief). Now the bad news: The one-minute clip sure makes it seem like this will be the final Caped Crusader flick for Nolan and star Christian Bale. Watch the official teaser trailer below!
So, first the good stuff: The trailer gives us one brief shot of Batman (Bale), dripping wet and ready to throw down in some fisticuffs with the hulking baddie known as Bane (Inception's Tom Hardy). We also get a look at the crumbling buildings of Gotham (why, we wonder, are they falling apart -- and in the shape of a bat, no less?), which were already saw in last week's teaser poster.
Aside from that, we get a whole lot of Commisioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) looking near death in a hospital bed and, it seems, trying to convince Bruce Wayne to assume the role of the Batman once again. This would suggest that Batman, who was feeling some intense heat from the cops when we last saw him in 2008's The Dark Knight, decided to take a little vacation from vigilante justice. But with "evil rising" in the form of the aforementioned Bane, it's time for him to get back in the ring.
Now, here's the part that may bum out fans of Nolan's Batman movies (which, let's face it, is pretty much every man, woman and child from the ages of 4 to 120): The captions that accompany the footage sure spell out that this is our last chance to see Bale and Nolan's Dark Knight in action. "Every hero has a journey," reads the first title. "Every journey has an end," says the next. And the last title leave little room for interpretation, declaring that this is "the epic conclusion to the Dark Knight legend."
And perhaps that's a good thing. While it's unlikely think Nolan would ever pop out a clunker like 1997's Batman and Robin, the guy's instincts as a filmmaker are pretty on the money. If he thinks he's only got three Batman films in him, we'll gladly accept a trilogy -- and kindly thank him for not resurrecting Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze for the final film. That's one villain that can freeze in hell.
