The bat also rises

We miss Heath Ledger.

No getting around it: as the Joker, his brand of “crazy” was something that made The Dark Knight truly special. But some brilliant, erratic fireworks can burn only so long, not even long enough for Christopher Nolan.

Instead, the Nolan brothers — director Christopher plus co-writer Jonathan — turn in their third, highly anticipated Batman installment, The Dark Knight Rises, that’s darker, brainier and classier, perhaps, than the previous episodes. It’s because they have so many loose ends to tie up, so the plot circles back to the Harvey Dent era and its consequences for Gotham City; then hurtles back further to the League of Shadows, the mountain-dwelling training camp where Bruce Wayne acquired his bat-like skills and powers.

At a special IMAX advance screening on Thursday (the cinema had plans to show it 24 hours straight the following morning, the day of its worldwide release), Nolan fans got some closure as the caped crusader once again tries to save Gotham City in this final, dark and moody entry.

Along for the ride is Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman. She’s slinky, lithe and lethal. Rrrrowww. Tom Hardy is on board too as this outing’s villain, Bane, a mask-wearing kingpin with “the physicality of a gorilla,” according to Nolan’s press notes. He also trained with the League of Shadows, but has a different agenda in mind than Batman’s.

Just to make it even more of a Christopher Nolan Ensemble, there’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt on hand as John Blake, a cop disillusioned by political and police corruption; and Marion Cotillard, a member of Wayne Enterprises who helps persuade her CEO to come out of retirement.

It’s a curious time in Gotham. Even though the city has a record low crime rate thanks to tough measures pushed through after Dent’s death, some are not happy, including Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) who wants to come clean about who the actual crime-fighting “hero” was: Batman. Now, thousands of violent criminals are locked up, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is practically a hermit, living in the shadows of Wayne Manor, and Alfred (Michael Caine) is still hanging around, long after he should be collecting a pension.

Masked ball: Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) meets up again with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway).

Plus there’s a new breed of criminal lurking beneath Gotham’s streets: Bane, who has no trouble escaping a private plane where he’s being held hostage (by Petyr Baylish, a.k.a. “Littlefinger” from Game of Thrones) in the spectacular aerial sequence that opens the movie. There are plenty of great set pieces in Dark Knight Rises — including a takeover of the stock market that brings to mind the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, an exploding football field, and an armed confrontation between cops and thugs that recalls Scorsese’s Gangs of New York in its visual scope. There are crashes and chases galore, just as in The Dark Knight, but there are also fewer laughs, perhaps because the Joker is nowhere to be found. Indeed, these are dour characters, with little to lighten the mood. Commissioner Gordon is gloomy, Alfred is worried, Gordon-Levitt is always bellyaching about something. Morgan Freeman as Wayne Enterprises technology guru Lucius Fox brings a chuckle, as usual. And though one misses Michelle Pfeiffer’s campy comic Catwoman one-liners, Hathaway does have some great moments, whether taking out some baddies in a bar or arguing with Batman over whether it’s more fun to play with guns. Meanwhile Cillian Murphy has a fine comic cameo as Scarecrow leading a kangaroo court.

Fans are bound to complain about the villain, Bane. He’s no Joker, that’s for sure, and even though Hardy brings his thespian tones and added bulkage to the role, he basically comes off as a UFC cage man in a Hannibal Lecter mask and good diction.

As always, the Nolans keep the material topical: in The Dark Knight (2008), it was the threat of terrorism, and what people were willing to do to protect themselves against it; here, it’s the inequity of wealth in the world, a timely issue that Selina Kyle observes with relish: “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne,” she whispers in his ear. “And when it hits, you and your friends are all going to wonder how you thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” It’s Nolan channeling the frustration of the have-nots, filtering it through the educated liberalism of Inside Job and Occupy Wall Street.

New villain Bane (Tom Hardy) comes across as a steroidal Hannibal Lecter in a mask in The Dark Knight Rises.

Unlike a lot of superhero movies, Nolan’s movies are packed with ideas: you end up thinking about his arguments, between replaying the action scenes in your head. He and his brother write the kind of scripts that Comic Con nerds debate and quote years later. The Avengers, by way of comparison, may have been a ton o’ fun, but it wasn’t exactly a brain-stretcher. Nor did it make Earth’s demise seem terribly affecting. The Dark Knight movies do, by centralizing the threat and locating it on one point on the map: Gotham City, a place that might not even be worth saving, because it has plenty of flaws. Just as we all do.

And so does Bruce Wayne. At first, he’s shown as a hobbling recluse with a cane — Howard Hughes with slightly better grooming. But his character undergoes a change — for the worse. Rather than urging him to don his cloak once again, manservant perceives that Wayne might not be up to the task. “You might want to fail,” he warns Wayne. And Batman is no longer the young man of the first Nolan film; he’s middle-aged, and he’s undergone a full trilogy cycle of deaths of loved ones, self-reflection and even self-loathing. So it’s an interesting twist when Wayne finds himself having to overcome fears and demons worse than those he did before — literally having to dig himself out of a deeper existential hole than the earlier Batman ever did. It’s an interesting metaphor for midlife crisis. Either that, or it’s just another cool visual. And with that, the Nolans wrap up one of the most thought-provoking cinematic comic books ever.