This is the third and final movie in the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy starring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman. The film is set eight years after the events of The Dark Knight with Gotham being mostly crime-free and Bruce Wayne holding up as a recluse in Wayne Manor while Batman is vilified for killing Harvey Dent. Dent is still being held out as a hero, and the law passed in his name allowed the police to keep all the criminals he prosecuted locked up. When a new threat to Gotham emerges, in the form of a mercenary named Bane (played by Tom Hardy) who was excommunicated from The League of Shadows, Bruce must bring Batman back to try and save the city.
The 4k-UHD version is a three-disc set. The UHD disc just has the movie itself, and then there are two regular blu-ray discs, one with the film and one with most of the extras. The regular blu-ray with the movie on it does have a second-screen experience that allows you to watch the movie with exclusive content that pops up as the movie plays. The bonus disc has about two hours worth of behind-the-scenes and making-of material, and an hour-long featurette on the Batmobile, basically discussing its evolution during the comics and the various live-action versions. It included interviews with Adam West and the creator of the Batmobile from the 1960s TV show, as well as Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, and the crew members who designed the cars for the pre-Nolan movies, and then extensive interviews with the design team from the Nolan movies. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is wonderful, especially during the Imax sequences that are scattered throughout the movie.
Overall, this is a fine end to the Nolan Trilogy, which absolutely revived the live-action Batman franchise and arguably paved the way for the boom of superhero movies that would follow 2005's Batman Begins. The main supporting characters/actors (Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman) were all brought back, and the additions to the cast were, of course, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway playing Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Joseph Gordon Levitt who is a GCPD member, as well as Ben Mendelsohn (from Rouge One), Marion Cotillard, Adien Gillian (from Game of Thrones), and 80s star Matthew Modine. And, Cillian Murphy makes yet another appearance as Dr. Crane. Some of the supporting character's roles are definitely larger than others. Hathaway does a great job as Selina Kyle, although playing a much different version of the character than any of the other live-action versions of her, and Hardy is very good as Bane, especially having to act through a mask through 99% of his scenes. There were rumors that the original plan was also to work Joker into the third movie, however, after Heath Ledger's death, that role was never going to be recast, and they did not even use archival footage or deleted footage from the second movie of Joker in this one. While I still think that the second movie, The Dark Knight, is the best in the trilogy, this is a worthy follow-up and definitely worth watching.
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