First official poster for 'The Dark Knight Rises' surfaces

Posted Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 4:58 PM Central
Last updated Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 8:28 AM Central

by John Couture

Back in May, we all got excited when the first image of Bane from The Dark Knight Rises debuted at the official site for the movie. It was quite unexpected and it spread like wildfire across the Internet.

With Comic Con right around the corner, we all figured that Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan would have something up their sleeves to help quench their fans' overflowing desire for information on the concluding chapter of the Dark Knight trilogy.

Well, I'm not sure if they plan to drop anything further at Comic Con itself, but we got a big present today in the form of the movie's first teaser poster.

And what a teaser poster it is.

As you can see (you can click on it for a much higher resolution version on the official site), the poster is in keeping with the teaser poster that they released for The Dark Knight in December of 2007. The main element of the design remains the bat symbol, although in the latest release it's formed via the negative space of the collapsing skyscrapers.

To be honest, it looks like Nolan could have used an image from his blockbuster Inception when creating this poster. But, I think the main takeaway from the teaser is that The Dark Knight Rises is going to pick up right where The Dark Knight left off with Gotham in chaos and "falling apart" due to Batman's absence.

To further the metaphor from the teaser poster of The Dark Knight, you could argue that just like the bat symbol was fashioned into the main villain of the movie, so too is the teaser poster for The Dark Knight Rises. Yes, we know that Bane and Catwoman are going to play heavily into the movie, but the true villain of the third installment for Batman may indeed be Gotham itself.