As a stand-alone movie, The Dark Knight Risesis pretty darn good — better than most summer action movies, but not as good as The Dark Knight. But as the culmination of an epic trilogy, three films that are tight enough to be a single movie, it's incredible.

Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy does something nobody's ever done before: tell a long, coherent story about the creation and deconstruction of a heroic symbol. He's explored the meaning of Batman in a way that deepens our understanding of the tropes of the superheroic "secret identity."

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