This weekend has been a weekend of Batman for me. Saturday morning I sat down and watched my Blu-ray of Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s epic and fantastic reboot of the Batman franchise. Sunday night I watched The Dark Knight, completing a trilogy watch, albeit out of order.

My plan had been to watch both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight on Saturday and on Sunday morning go watch The Dark Knight Rises, but the length of the films involved and other activities meant I only watched Batman Begins.

The Dark Knight Rises is not just the third film on the serious, until other third films, Goldfinger for James Bond, The Search For Spock for the Star Trek Franchise, and Son of Frankenstein, this film really is the final act of the Batman story. Too many times I have watched a film go off the rail and crash in the third act, not so with The Dark Knight Rises.

I will discuss spoiler material from the first two films, it’s been four years since The Dark Knight, and I shall try not to be spoilerific for this newest and final installment.

Batman Begins gave us the haunted, torment Bruce Wayne, the man without a life, without a clear path, a man for whom destiny decided that greater things were required of him and placed him into the League of Shadows, an illuminati group dedicated to bring balance to the world, usually by destroying cities that they have judged corrupt. Bruce after gaining considerable skills from their tutelage, rebels at killing and returns to Gotham taking up the mantle of the city’s protector. His scuffles with mob crime does little to prepare him for battle with his old mentor Ra’s Al Ghul, head of the League of Shadows. In the end he defeats the league and Ra’s Al Ghul is killed.

In The Dark Knight Batman confronts The Joker, a psychotic criminal who’s worldview is simply that the world is chaos and those who insist on order are the insane one.  The Joker breaks the sanity of Gotham heroic district attorney, Harvey Dent, transforming the shinning knight into a murderous villain. Rather than have the people of Gotham lose hope when the city is beginning to find sanity, batman takes the blame for Dent’s murders, keeping Two Face a secret between him and police Commissioner Jim Gordon, transforming Batman from hero into hunted outlaw.

With that set-up, The Dark Knight Rises open with Bruce Wayne now a recluse, complete with Howard Hughes style rumors and a financial empire teetering on the brink of collapse. A new villain enters the film franchise, sorry Mr. Limbaugh Bane was not a liberal conspiracy to get Mitt Romney,  strong, ruthless, and utterly dedicate Bane represents nearly a fusion of the threats posed by Ra’s Al Ghul and The Joker, coming at a time with Bruce Wayne is physically, mentally, and emotionally crippled.

The film quiet deftly references events in the first two film, and creates a sense of unity in theme and imagery that works very well across the entire trilogy.

This film clocks in at two hours and forty-four minutes, though I suspect a good eighteen minutes are credits, and yet it does not have significant butt time. The plot moves, it neatly resolves the character dilemmas that have been building for two movies, and delivers great action and great character.

It is also emphatically an ending. Be prepared for that going in.

I loved this movie, third acts often are trouble, but Mr. Nolan has not failed to live up to his standards.