The Dark Knight RisesSave

We open eight years after the end of The Dark Knight (2008). The Dent Act has cleaned up Gotham — organized crime crushed by Commissioner Gordon's prosecution of every named mob figure on Harvey Dent's manufactured posthumous record. Bruce Wayne has retired as Batman, living as a recluse at Wayne Manor with a cane, his body broken from the previous decade. He hasn't been seen publicly in seven years. The city has stabilized — but at a cost: the Batman is officially the murderer who killed Harvey Dent.

A new threat arrives. Bane — a mercenary in a strange breathing mask, supernaturally strong, his face partially obscured — orchestrates the abduction of a Russian nuclear physicist mid-air from a CIA plane. He has been hired by John Daggett, a corporate raider trying to acquire Wayne Enterprises through hostile means. Daggett's strategy involves a sophisticated bankrupting attack on Bruce Wayne's portfolio. A cat burglar named Selina Kyle, who has been quietly stealing from Gotham's elite, breaks into Wayne Manor to steal Bruce's mother's pearl necklace — and accidentally lifts his fingerprints, which she sells to Daggett.

The fingerprint sale is part of Bane's larger plan. Using Bruce's identity, Bane orchestrates massive short-sale attacks on Wayne Enterprises that bankrupts Bruce overnight. Bruce returns to active duty as Batman. He confronts Bane in the Gotham sewers and is brutally defeated — Bane breaks Batman's back over his knee, mocking him with the most-quoted line in the trilogy: 'Theatricality and deception are powerful agents to the uninitiated.' Bane sends Bruce to a remote underground prison called the Pit, a vertical hole in the ground in central Asia where prisoners are kept in a state of permanent hope.

Bane reveals his real plan to a captive Bruce: a fully-functional nuclear bomb has been stolen from a Wayne Enterprises clean-energy project. Bane intends to detonate the bomb in central Gotham, fulfilling Ra's al Ghul's original League of Shadows mission to destroy the city. Bane delivers a public broadcast from the football field of Gotham's Heinz Field, releasing every Blackgate Prison inmate, killing the Mayor, exposing the Harvey Dent lie that has kept Gotham's underworld suppressed for eight years. The city falls into anarchy. Bane controls it with the bomb on a five-month timer.

Bruce, deep in the Pit, has to recover physically and emotionally. He has been told by a fellow prisoner that the only person who ever escaped the Pit was a child — a child driven by desperate hope. Bruce starts climbing the vertical pit shaft. He falls. He tries again. He fails. On the third attempt, without a safety rope, fueled by genuine fear of death, he leaps and reaches the top. He returns to Gotham.

The third act takes place across multiple locations. Selina Kyle, who has become a reluctant ally, helps Bruce neutralize Bane's headquarters. Gordon, in hiding for months, leads a tactical team of Gotham cops trapped in the city sewers. Lucius Fox identifies the bomb's truck location. The bomb is moving constantly through Gotham streets. Bruce, in the Bat (a new flying vehicle), pursues it across the city. The final battle is in the streets outside Wayne Tower. Bane is defeated. The bomb's countdown is at 90 seconds.

Bruce flies the bomb out over the Gotham Bay using the Bat. The bomb detonates a safe distance offshore. The shockwave is visible from the city. Bruce is, apparently, killed. Gotham mourns. A statue is erected to Batman in the city's central rotunda. Selina inherits Wayne Manor as a children's home. Months later, Alfred — who has been told by Bruce earlier that he would one day see him alive in a café in Florence — spots Bruce and Selina at a café in Florence. Bruce nods. Alfred weeps. The Bat had an autopilot system Lucius Fox had installed before the climax. Bruce parachuted out before detonation.

The Dark Knight Rises grossed $1.085 billion globally on a $250 million budget — the highest-grossing Christopher Nolan film at the time of release. It completed the most-acclaimed superhero trilogy in modern cinema. Christian Bale has not played Batman since. Tom Hardy went on to play Venom; Anne Hathaway returned to the role only in advisory cameos. The film's nuclear-bomb climax remains the most-discussed end of any superhero trilogy.