Full Disclosure: Last August, a group of friends and I appeared as extras in the Pittsburgh filming of The Dark Knight Rises. No, we can’t be seen on screen.  This does not effect my review.

It’s hard to believe that seven years ago, I sat in a theater waiting for the Midnight showing of Batman Begins, almost ambivalent to it.  Having only directed Memento & Insomnia before, Christopher Nolan was an unproven property as a director.  The film looked darker and more intimate than the infamous Batman & Robin years earlier. It was a cast of A+ talent, looking to revive a superhero considered lost to shlocky filmmaking.  No one really trusted it.  And it succeeded. Since then, the Nolan helmed Batman franchise has become one of the most beloved, anticipated and successful elements of Hollywood. A few years later, fans clamored to see the first images of Heath Ledger’s the Joker, were heartbroken at his untimely passing and in Summer 2008 came in droves to see the masterful The Dark Knight.

What was considered a risky and dark project became a multi-billion dollar franchise, beloved by fans and critics alike.  It even gained Heath Ledger an Oscar, an indication of quality which the world of “comic book” films had never aspired to, and make never make again.

But more than anything, especially coming out of The Dark Knight, I wondered if the story was worth revisiting. Did the tale of this new, modern interpretation of the Batman saga need an ending? The third act is always the trickiest, and I am very proud to say - The Dark Knight Rises successfully pulls together the loose ends of the Batman legacy and delivers a final film worthy of the saga which came before it.

Set eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, the world of Gotham City is a very different place. In the wake of the death of Harvey Dent, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has entered himself into exile.  The Batman is an outcast, having become the villain Gotham needed. But more importantly - he’s no longer needed.  A law called the Dent Act denies continued criminals parole, leaving thousands of criminals behind bars, effectively neutering the world of organized crime.  So Wayne now has become a broken man of rumor and insulation, walking with a cane and haunting the halls of Wayne Manor while his trusty butler and parent figure Alfred (Michael Caine) keeps up appearances.

He’s not the only hero lost, however, as a police without a war against crime has nothing to fight, leaving Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) feeling like a relic and a liar for never revealing the truth of what happened.  There are those cops who believe there was more to what happened, like Officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a Gotham beat cop who grew up in the era of Batman, wanting to believe that true heroes do exist - something he desperately needed as an orphan growing up in a group home founded by the Wayne Foundation.

As for the Wayne Foundation, they’re not doing too hot either, as a failed project to create a renewable energy source spent almost all the money the company had, leaving it in the hands of trusted ally Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and prime investor Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard).

If that wasn’t enough, as you’ve heard in trailer after trailer, a storm is coming for Gotham.  A small one in the name of a slinky cat burglar by the name of Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), and a much bigger squall in the name of Bane (Tom Hardy), a relentless mercenary wearing a bizarre gas mask, who has been silently building an army of the poor and downtrodden in Gotham’s sewers.

It’s clearly a lot of moving parts, and a lot to grasp and follow, but after a somewhat jerky and disjointed opening, Wayne finds himself intrigued by the actions of Kyle and the armies of Bane, and after eight years of silence, puts on the Batsuit one more time.

What follows is absolutely awe-inspiring filmmaking.  Christopher Nolan, serving as director and co-writer (alongside his brother Jonathan Nolan and story writer David Goyer), has upped the stakes in this final part in ways one could never have expected.  If the last film was about chaos, The Dark Knight Rises is a story of fear, and more importantly, our worst fears.  While developed long before the Occupy movement was in effect, the story is one of our worst fears as a society.  To see the class lines crumble, to see the people rise up violently, to see our worst sides placed for all to see.

But even in the movie’s extreme sense of doom, gloom and fear, underlined through countless sequences of destruction and defeat on a scale rarely seen in today’s films, something true comes out.  The power of the individual, the power to rise up.

From front to back, the cast excels. Christian Bale reminds us all why we loved his work in Batman Begins, after understandably taking a back seat in The Dark Knight. While he may not be in every scene of the film, his specter looms heavily, with his actions as both Wayne and Batman dictating the pace for every other character in the film.  Michael Caine delivers his masterwork as Alfred here, as a father figure pushed too far, he’s absolutely heartbreaking.  The new editions to the cast shine as well - Tom Hardy is an absolute animal as Bane. While many may (understandably) mock his unique cadence and voice, once the man gets into action, he is unstoppable.  Clearly an intellectual equal to the Batman, Bane has a unique twist to any villain prior - while many like to work in the shadows, Bane is not afraid to do his work in the daylight, and tell the world exactly why they should follow him into doing it.  It’s a stark contrast to a man who works in the shadows and longs to be a one-man army, and really allows Bane to shine as a character. He’s an immense physical threat as well, with one fight sequence between Batman and Bane being shot stark, without any score, so you can feel every hit and absorb the brutality.  Anne Hathaway, well, she made a believer out of me.  Sly, smart, devious and with a unique sense of morals, her version of Selena Kyle is a level of femme fatale I never expected to see out of the one time star of The Princess Diaries. Her work as Catwoman will stand alongside the greats.  And the real surprise? Although he shouldn’t be, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Gordon-Levitt continues to show why he is an actor that I will follow into any project, as he injects the film with a hardened heart and soul as John Blake.  It’s truly a masterclass in acting paired excellently with an ambitious filmmaker.  The movie cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and you never once feel like it was a penny wasted.

As Ducard tells Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, “If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal and if they can’t stop you, you become something else entirely — a legend.” This is the movie where the legend officially becomes greater than the man.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and while in many ways The Dark Knight Rises exists as a conclusion to the story of Bruce Wayne, the movie pushes how the ideals of what Batman is, was and were to be make a greater impact than the actions of just one man.  And if anything, that is what makes The Dark Knight Rises a wonderful bookend to the story.  Amazing work, all. Highest possible recommendation.