That was fast. The viral marketing campaign kickstarted by Warner Bros. for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises sent fans into the streets around the globe in search of Bat graffiti, which they had to photograph and submit to a specific email address. Throughout the day Monday, stills from an eventual trailer were being posted to the Web site TheDarkKnightRises.com.
Minutes before midnight on Monday evening, the stills were complete and the trailer was revealed.
"There’s a storm coming," whispers Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) to billionaire Bruce Wayne, and the somber tone of this mood-drenched trailer suggests rainy days ahead for the Caped Crusader.
The trailer incorporates a lot of the Bane-on-a-plane footage that was part of the seven-minute IMAX tease Nolan shared with fans a few months ago. This new clip also suggests that Bane’s voice – masked from behind a mouthpiece of bones – has been cleaned up. "I’m Gotham’s reckoning," the burly villain states, and you actually can understand him. Thank goodness.
The trailer also suggests that Batman is going to go away for a while. “Did they kill him?” police officer John Blake asks Catwoman, to which she replies, "I’m not sure."
Batman fans know Bane, in the comics, notoriously broke the Bat’s back. While Nolan might not go that far, it’s clear the Dark Knight will be out of commission for some time, because a young boy asks if the hero is ever coming back, and Nolan sneaks in a very quick shot of Catwoman piloting Batman’s motorcycle through the streets of Gotham.
Hope is lost. Faith is broken. A fire will rise. And the "epic conclusion" reaches theaters on July 20. Here’s the latest trailer. It speaks for itself. Watch it, then tell us what you think!
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