1) We’ve been told that the main events of this movie take place eight long years after The Dark Knight, but this opening seems to follow seamlessly from the climax to the preceding film. Gary Oldman delivers a still grieving eulogy to Harvey Dent, and is soulful and transfixing in his scant few seconds of screentime. Gordon seems broken, haunted.
2) Bane’s entrance has echoes of the Joker’s introduction in The Dark Knight. He seems to be just another faceless crim to begin with. But he’s undoubtedly a figure with a considerable underworld reputation.
3) Nolan’s clearly still working through his 007 fixation after Inception. There’s a distinct pre-titles Bond vibe to these opening moments. The key action sequence is a skyborne assault on a CIA jet, and Nolan delivers an impressively physical setpiece here. It feels thrillingly real, and that adds a commendable sense of old school wow, especially unique in this age of digitally-drenched superheroics. These are the kind of knuckle-whitening, real world stunts you applaud for their sheer scale and ambition.
4) There’s some stunningly IMAX-friendly location work – Nolan crashes the camera through rippling cornfields and flies us above bleakly rugged mountainscapes. It’s the undying power of big screen 2D.
4) Tom Hardy’s Bane lacks the insanely steroidal bulk of his comic book counterpart. But he has a stare that could slice your spine. Up close his mask resembles the jaw of a prehistoric beast or two skeletal fists colliding. He’s all menace and muscle, but as much a strategist as a combat-trousered thug, with a surprisingly rich, even fruity voice.
5) Pity he’s rendered pretty much indecipherable by that mask. Entire chunks of dialogue are lost in a muffled abyss, including the scene’s crucial pay-off line. If it’s an aesthetic decision by Nolan then it’s a frustrating and puzzling one. Someone really needs to tweak the sound mix here. There’s still time to fix this.
6) Maybe he’s not even called Bane. Maybe he has a nice, sensible name, like Adrian. It just sounds like Bane through that bloody mask.
7) Hans Zimmer deploys the tribal chant you heard on the trailer. It’s seriously goose-pimpling.
8) Our peek at the prologue was followed by tantalising flashes from the rest of the film: the citizens of Gotham clashing in street-brawling scenes of civil unrest, Batman wielding a new tech-toy, Bane standing triumphant in the snow, Selina Kyle in both a prison jumpsuit and full, domino-masked Catwoman gear (which does feel like a new flavour in Nolan’s regimentedly realistic universe) and, most ominously of all, Bane holding and then discarding a broken Batman mask…
9) Officially? We’re stoked.
