simply excited

Jared, thank you for sharing this exciting review! I found these words thrilling:

With The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan expands on a comprehensive nightmare of the early 21st century, again playing The Scarecrow to the many millions whose anxieties complete the illusion. He’s made a horror trilogy in the guise of summertime action-adventure, a mind-blowing pulp allegory for America’s worst-case scenario: Terrorist networks, the surveillance state, loose nukes, kangaroo courts, all-out class warfare, the grim threat of fascism on one end and anarchy on the other. And at its center is an all-too-human hero whose courage and integrity masks a crippling uncertainty over whether he can beat back the darkness. 

Though it introduces another round of new characters, including two antagonists in Bane and Catwoman, The Dark Knight Rises impresses most in the way it integrates the mythology of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight into a larger whole. Where the previous two might have seemed like separate but related units, the third reveals a master plan that goes beyond just another expensive mission for our caped crusader. In those early encounters with Ra’s al Ghul and his League Of Shadows in Batman Begins and the chaos stoked by The Joker in The Dark Knight, Nolan was laying the groundwork for a titanic struggle between good and evil, both in Gotham City and within the soul of its tormented vigilante.

What I love is the different demons the main antagonists represent: Scarecrow is fear, Joker is chaos, Harvey Dent is inconsistency, Catwoman is disloyalty, and Bane is control.

Batman is courageous, orderly, consistent, loyal, and free. That's what makes them great foils to him.

Part of me is disappointed that characters in the cannon such as Penguin, Riddler, and Poison Ivy, never made it into Nolan's Batman. Nor did Robin make it.

But those are minor nits. Overall, Nolan tells a remarkably detailed story, and I am looking forward to seeing how it concludes.