Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Me, I've always been a fan of Christopher Nolan more than I have Batman. Don't get me wrong, I was wowed by the reinvention of Batman Begins and the wallop of The Dark Knight, but I'll always choose the sleight-of-hand of The Prestige or the cerebral jolt of Inception given the choice. The Dark Knight Rises is a stunning piece of work, gigantic in scale with hugely ambitious themes, but Nolan's contribution to the Batman legacy – and indeed the superhero genre as a whole – is to make these films more about the men behind the masks than the heroes they portray: the guys who make the magic happen.