Every Batman Movie Opening Scene Ranked From Worst To Best

Following the lead of The Dark Knight's mesmerising Joker (Heath Ledger) introduction was a basically thankless task, but Christopher Nolan made a strong attempt to one-up it with an opening that basically felt like the director's audition to helm a James Bond film.

Like The Dark Knight, the threequel opens by focusing on the primary villain rather than Batman himself, seguing from Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) giving a eulogy at Harvey Dent's (Aaron Eckhart) funeral to the CIA taking custody of Dr. Leonid Pavel (Alon Abutbul) and mercenaries working for the terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy).

Once the CIA loads their plane with the human cargo, though, we learn that one of the mercenaries is actually Bane himself, who soon enough hatches his plan to hijack the plane, take custody of Dr. Pavel, and crash the plane with no survivors.

Though not quite hitting the highs of the Joker scene, its ambition is still to be respected - the high-wire action is absolutely riveting, and Hardy's physical performance as Bane, voice and all, is terrifically intimidating.