Best of 2012. Number 3

The final part of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.

Trying to fill the exceptionally large clown's shoes the Joker left behind is no easy task and Dir. Nolan and screenwriters Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer do very well to give us a third film that almost lives up to the expectations of The Dark Knight.

Tom Hardy bulks up again to give Christian Bale's gravel voiced Batman a physical challenge that no other villain in the trilogy has been able to do. And it shows. Within the space of about ten minutes, Bruce Wayne is crippled and in a jail pit somewhere. In the meantime, Bane has set about organising a revolution in Gotham, villifying the 1% in a weird sort of 'Occupy Gotham' movement, with more masks. Batman gets healed and retrained up despite his age and comes back to Gotham where the film suddenly turns to the tired 'ticking bomb' cliche and loses a lot of its magic before the film ends in a way I found disappointing.

Add to this story strands from Batman Begins, a young police officer (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who can magically deduce Batman's identity because, hey, they were both orphans and a fantastic Catwoman played by Anne Hathaway and you end up with a film that isn't as entirely as fantastic as you'd have hoped.

However, despite the film's flaws, The Dark Knight Rises is a complex, emotionally potent film which is also thrilling and action packed. Bane and Batman's fights are gritty and intense and the first scene of the film is SO good. Hans Zimmer's music is as good here as it has throughout the trilogy and Christopher Nolan somehow manages to compact an awful lot into a comparatively short run time.

However, it's not as good as another certain superhero film which is still to come.

Can you guess what it is yet?