The Dark Knight Rises (2012) is a superhero epic of a magnitude that is difficult to explain in a few short paragraphs. It is the third film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. This film is set over the course of several months, primarily in the fictional Gotham City, an American city that until recently was rife with crime and corruption and which had made great progress in these areas due to the events of the previous films. The protagonist is Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), the eponymous Dark Knight, who retired his Batman alter ego after taking the blame for Harvey Dent's crimes at the end of The Dark Knight. Wayne stopped the fusion reactor project out of fear. could be used as a weapon, resulting in lost profits for Wayne Enterprises. Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) steals Wayne's fingerprints and gives them to Phillip Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn), a businessman who plans to take over Wayne Enterprises. After a kidnapping gone wrong, Selina escapes a double cross from Daggett's associates. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), guilt-ridden by the lies told to the public about the events of the last film, writes down the truth, but chooses not to make it public. He is captured and brought to Bane (Tom Hardy), a mysterious man who has escaped CIA custody and is now living with his men in the sewers of Gotham. Gordon flees and is soon smitten by a cop named John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who he promotes to detective. Bane attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange at Daggett's request to bankrupt Wayne. Wayne resurrects the Batman persona in a failed attempt to foil Bane's attack. To prevent his company from falling into Daggett's hands, Wayne hands over the reins of the company to Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) with... ...calling himself the people's champion. He begins his public takeover of Gotham at the football game with the first of a series of speeches championing populism in its wildest and most militant incarnation. “Gotham is yours,” he tells people. Like the Parisians of 1789, the revolutionaries storm the prison. In Bane's mind, criminals are forced to commit crimes due to the rule of the elites. Blackgate and the Bastille are symbols of “oppression”. They are the allies of the people, not their enemy. Bane tells the people the truth about Harvey Dent, saying that he is a "false idol" who keeps the people from tearing down a "corrupt city". Bane's narrative is that a lying and corrupt elite has kept the people in check with a "myth of opportunity". Bane's uprising is a cautionary tale, it is 21st century populism taken to militant extremes.