Permit me, for a moment, to enter nerd mode. I'm excited for The Dark Knight Rises, as I'm sure are many of you. Really what I'm most looking forward to about it, though, is Chris Nolan's interpretation of Bane. The Dark Knight was really an order of magnitude better than Batman Begins. Begins was silly and cartoonish and more like an episode of the animated series (which was excellent, don't get me wrong). After Begins was successful and Nolan had a blank check to do whatever he wanted, he was able to do what he does best. Nolan is at his best telling stories that subtly subvert ones perception of reality. Even considering TDK, my favorite Nolan movies are still Memento and The Prestige. He was able to use Joker as his mind-fuck in TDK, with considerable thanks to Heath Ledger. Movie tropes notwithstanding, the Joker has always traditionally been the villain that was Batman's mental equal. TDK was one of the first major comic films that had a real rival to the hero. No megalomaniacal plot for world domination/destruction, no crazy technology. Just a dangerous villain to be dealt with intimately and purposefully (to be fair, Spiderman 1's final face-off with Norman Osborn was quite good). In this regard, Bane is a better foil for Batman even than the Joker.
While Joker is arguably the most dangerous figure in Batman's rogues gallery in a volatile sense, Bane has always been the most direct threat. Joker could construct elaborate, psychopathic scenarios to torture Batman, but he could never stand up to him in a straight fight. On the other hand, Bane is both a genius and a super bad-ass. Having both deduced Batman's true identity and outsmarted him, he humiliated Batman by literally breaking him and assuming control of Gotham. Now, in a Chris Nolan world, I fully expect Bane to be realized as the cerebral, urban tactician that he deserves to be and the hulking monster most people identify him as. But I really dig the aesthetic that Nolan's gone for in TDKR. It's not cartoonish. No lucha libre mask. Just a bad-ass Tom Hardy with a guerrilla army at his back. Bane is Batman's true equal and the recent release of posters and banners really highlight that rivalry.
One of my few complaints about TDK (I have more for Begins) is that, for everything else that he does so well, Nolan is not that great of an action/fight director. His action is often muddled and incoherent. As he's done more action movies, it's improved. I'm really hoping TDKR is able to deliver a great Batman/Bane fight. I hope it's intimate and brutal, but most of all I hope it's spatially legible and well edited!
I'm also currently reading Scott Snyder's run on Batman in DC's reboot, the New 52. It's pretty fantastic.
/nerd
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