Holy Opening Sequence Batman!: The 6 Minute Prologue for ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Tonight, I waited in line for an hour in order to see six minutes of footage.

And it was totally worth it.

Last week, a counter on a viral site tied to The Dark Knight Rises hit 0. Many people suspected it was counting down to the release of the first official trailer. It was not. Instead, it was counting down to the announcement of limited screenings in certain cities: IMAX screenings of the prologue to The Dark Knight Rises.

Trust me, I was ALL OVER THAT.

While I already had a ticket, seating was first-come first-serve, so I ended up getting to the Carnegie Science Center’s Omnimax Theater an hour early. All for six minutes of footage.

To clarify: these are, according to what we were told tonight, roughly the first six or so minutes of The Dark Knight Rises. This footage will be showing on IMAX theaters throughout the US as of Friday, but tonight was an early bird screening. You can see the same thing I did tonight in a matter of days.

Okay, okay, so some of you wanna know how this whole thing kicks off? Well, fine, I’ll tell you, but first?

SPOILER WARNING.

I’m not sure if the first thing we saw is actually part of the opening, but the experience began with a scene from Harvey Dent’s funeral, with Commissioner James Gordon telling the people of Gotham “I believed in Harvey Dent.”

From there, Nolan does something really similar to how he opened The Dark Knight: we get an action sequence featuring the film’s major villain. While TDK showed The Joker’s gang robbing a bank, in the case of TDKR we instead see Interpol attempting to get Dr. Leonid Pavel to safety…and away from Bane…played by an unrecognizable Tom Hardy.

Guess how well that works?

Bane infiltrates the plane disguised as one of his own henchmen. He’s cuffed and interrogated, but that doesn’t really go so well. Bane makes off with the Dr. Pavel after an action sequence I really can’t fully describe here, but it involves ripping a plane apart in mid-air.

There were also a few other quick shots following the scene including Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and a quick (I mean QUICK) shot of Joseph Gordon-Levitt that is pretty much enough to squash any rumors that he’s playing The Joker (he’s missing the character’s scars).

Oh, and I didn’t JUST get to see footage: all attendees got a free t-shirt. There were two designs to choose from, one with a sort of Bane-mask-like design that said “END” and the other with a Bat symbol with the word “LEGEND.” Guess which one I got.

Damn straight.