A Knight to remember?

PREVIEW REVIEW: By the pricking of Christopher Nolan's thumbs ...

LINKS: Watch the official teaser for The Dark Knight Rises; Daily Herald reviews of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight

Yo, A-S: This "Cherry Burst" business isn't fooling anyone.

Nobody drinks Alka-Seltzer for the flavor. Nobody drinks it at all, really. You take Alka-Seltzer by dissolving it in water and, yes, pouring that water down your throat, but that's just ingestion. The way I see it, when you actually drink something — whether it's a glass of lemonade after mowing the lawn, or a Big Gulp of your favorite soda at the movie theater — the act of drinking itself is pleasurable. My point is that I've never seen Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, but I know that almost everyone who did see it hated it. And that's why I tend to think that people get confused in their estimation of Batman Begins, the film with which writer and director Christopher Nolan assumed the Batmantle. For everyone whose innards were aflame with the heartburn of Batman & Robin, Batman Begins was a hearty swig of Alka-Seltzer. Soothing. Calming. Healing. But a great movie? Come on.

For starters, the screenplay was only co-written by Nolan, with David S. Goyer, from a story by Goyer. Goyer's left his mark on the good, the bad and the ugly of cinema, but when he's bad, he's really bad. You had an uninspired performance of a weak central villain, a stilted revisitation of the death of Batman's parents, and probably the most problematic action direction Nolan has ever done. Batman Begins isn't terrible, but at its best, it's boilerplate. Perfectly adequate if what you need is some sweet relief from the awful taste of Batman & Robin, but hardly a bold reinvention of a worn-thin franchise. Nolan had a better idea of what he wanted to do with The Dark Knight, got a world-class performance from Heath Ledger, didn't waste any time on backstory, and basically delivered a superhero movie grand slam.

So which Nolan is coming to the plate for The Dark Knight Rises next summer? Now that we've been given our first real indication of what's to come, I think it's safe to say that there's another home run in the works. The teaser is essentially a conversation between Batman, who's off camera, and Commissioner Gordon, who looks like he's either recuperating from an Adam Sandler movie marathon, or just got hit by a truck. Gary Oldman has been aces as Gordon from the start, so it's fitting to have him lead us into the next chapter in the story. There's a brief glimpse of Tom Hardy as Bane, once from the front, and a second time from behind. The rear-angle view,  with a wobbly Batman in the foregound while Bane comes to get him, rising up to fill the entire frame, is sheer brilliance. Bane is slightly out of focus, but his movement is direct and purposeful. I'm going to break that Bat-guy in half. It's a mesmerizing and mesmerizingly simple cut. The effect is to leave you almost more worried for Batman than for Gordon, who's only on life support in a hospital bed. There's a lot of opinion from fans of the comic books that Bane is a minor Batman villain, but this teaser definitely gives him some punch.

There's already a ridiculous roster of talent in the mix, with Oldman and Bale backed up by Morgan Freeman (Batman's tech guru) and Michael Caine (Alfred the butler), but The Dark Knight Rises is certainly raising the bar on casting. Hardy is one of three actors to come over from Nolan's Inception — the director also found room for Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and all three are strong performers. To say nothing of the fact that just about anything that got borrowed from Inception would be fine by me. The casting question mark, and it's a big one, is Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Do we really even need Catwoman? I admit that I'm intrigued to see what the more serious-minded Nolan has in store for a character who's always been more goofy than grim. But if you're going to go there, why make her a second-class citizen? She's obviously not the lead villain. And I'd guess that Cotillard is the clear successor to Katie Holmes (from Batman Begins) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Dark Knight), so Catwoman isn't even Batman's main squeeze here. It's nothing against the inarguably gifted Hathaway, but the whole thing just feels extraneous. I'd be just as happy to see as much of Catwoman in the movie as there is of her in the teaser. That is to say, nothing at all. Less is more, Mr. Nolan.