Every Batman Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

If you buy into the online hyperbole, then The Dark Knight Rises is a sacreligious finale to Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Saga, rather than a flawed but mesmerising mega-budget blockbuster.

Given the rather credibility-straining particulars of the script - namely John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learning Batman's identity and Bane (Tom Hardy) trapping the entire GCPD underground - it's clear that Nolan is far more interested in bombastic narrative heft than outright realism this time around.

But if you can accept some of its sillier plot points, The Dark Knight Rises is an evocative epic about a Bruce Wayne desperate to be Batman no more, but who dons the cape and cowl one last time to liberate Gotham.

Intoxicatingly operatic from its opening introduction to Bane all the way through to its fist-pumping finale, it's certainly not Nolan's strongest work in the franchise, but picks up The Dark Knight's impossibly weighty mantle with literary gusto.