"All superheroes are black sheep. But the Dark Knight has always been murkier than most. His superpowers are not an accident of birth, or of stumbling into the wrong lab at the wrong time. They're not powers at all, simply a simulation made possible by good fortune and the leisure that accompanies it. Bruce Wayne can splurge on the kit and cars to set himself up as a crime-fighting Christ substitute, plus power and glitter enough to hide his hobby. He's always been a curious idol: within aspiration because he's flesh and blood; beyond it because he's the lucky recipient of inherited wealth. So it should be no surprise that The Dark Knight Rises so firmly upholds the financial status quo. Christopher Nolan's film indulges in much guttural talk of the gap between the 99% and the 1%, but it is the former who are demonised, whose revolting actions require curbing and mutinous squeals muting. Your average Joe, it turns out, requires a benevolent, bad-ass billionaire to set him straight, to knock him sideways, if necessary. The Occupy Gotham movement, as organised by gargly terrorist Bane, is populated by anarchists without a cause, whose actions are fuelled by a lust for destruction, not as a corrective to an unjust world. Such self-made characters as we meet in the film are, by and large, fishy – power-grabbers hiding behind a fig-leaf of philanthropism. Even someone who earns their crust nicking other people's stuff looks agog when the masses storm posh apartments to try and redistribute a bit of bubbly. Batman's butler-crush and bells and whistles feudalism is swallowable – it's a cartoon, right! Likewise the free pass that Wayne's Rowntree-ish gestures, disapproval of criminals and general tortured grizzling seems to allow him. But The Dark Knight Rises is a quite audaciously capitalist vision, radically conservative, radically vigilante, that advances a serious, stirring proposal that the wish-fulfilment of the wealthy is to be championed if they say they want to do good. Mitt Romney will be thrilled. What's strange is that quite so many of the rest of us seem to want to buy into it."

"You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, there’s a comic-book movie for you. The Dark Knight Rises concludes the trilogy of Batman movies so distinctively rebooted, reimagined, and reinvigorated over the past seven years by director Christopher Nolan at the helm and actor Christian Bale in the Batsuit. And the highly anticipated project arrives with outsize political and cultural ambitions. Theme-wise, Nolan tackles nothing less than societal upheaval, urban unrest, class warfare, personal sacrifice, and spiritual salvation, with some nuclear brinkmanship thrown in for timeliness. That’s epic stuff, as grounded in serious social commentary as the literature of Charles Dickens that the director and his coscreenwriter brother, Jonathan Nolan, have cited as inspiration. This is a Batman narrative for a post-9/11 age of anxiety, morally split between the best of times and the worst of times."

"Heath Ledger – The Joker"

"Aaron Eckhart – Harvey Dent/Two-Face"

"[to Dent] You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan," even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die — well then, everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!"

"Commissioner James Gordon: Goddammit, will you stop pointing that gun at my family?!"

"Christian Bale – Bruce Wayne/Batman"

"Michael Caine – Alfred Pennyworth"

"Breaking from a more sprightly, brightly-colored tradition of comic book films best exemplified by Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man pictures, Nolan nudged the genre in the direction of hard realism. Bale’s Batman doesn’t behave like a valiant defender of the defenseless, rather like a hard-nosed cop unencumbered by legal codes of conduct. The Joker, a role that enshrined Heath Ledger in myth following his untimely passing, is no mere super villain, either. He’s an ideological deviant, referred to at least once in the script directly as a “terrorist”, compelled only by the love of violence and chaos. His agenda is chilling in its indifference; he gleefully sets a mountain of money ablaze in full view of the crooks he took it from, just to show them that this is a war fought on principle. He’s the closest thing to nuance that the DC rogues’ gallery has ever seen, and characteristic of a film founded in social theory. The Joker’s grand evil scheme? Sociology thought experiments … made real!"

"Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book."

"[to Batman] Don't talk like you’re one of them! You're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper. See, their "morals," their "code"? It's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these, ah, "civilized people"? They'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve."

"Gary Oldman – Lieutenant/Commissioner James Gordon"

"[to Dent] Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just... do things."

"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

"Have you ever had to talk to the person you love most, tell them it's all going to be alright when you know it's not? Well... you're about to know what that feels like, Gordon. Then, you can look me in the eye and tell me you're sorry."

"Tell your boy it’s going to be alright, Gordon. Lie, like I lied."

"You think I wanna escape from this? There is no escape from this!"

"The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming."

"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

"[to bank manager] I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you...stranger."

"[to Gambol] You wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker, and a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that — not... one... bit! So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me, and he says, "Why so serious?" He comes at me with the knife: "Why so serious?" He sticks the blade in my mouth: "Let's put a smile on that face!" And — [looks suddenly at Gambol's henchman] Why so serious? [kills Gambol]"

"Katie Holmes – Rachel Dawes"

"If you are good at something never do it for free."

"Morgan Freeman – Lucius Fox"

"Eric Roberts – Sal Maroni"

"I believe, whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you... stranger."

"Can you avenge evil without becoming it?"

"Out of the darkness…comes the Knight."

"Ng Chin Han as Lau"

"I'm an agent of chaos."

"The Dark Knight is that most uncommon of movie sequels, as virtuous as The Godfather II or Aliens: it doesn't just expand a previous storyline, it immeasurably enriches it by adding shadings of character development and moral complexity that were only hinted at in Batman Begins, the 2005 series rethink by director Christopher Nolan, who rescued Bob Kane's comic book creation from camp hell."

"Why So Serious?"

"More important than this, however, is the idea that Batman is not just a guy in a suit, but a symbol and there are people in the film most notably The Joker who want to destroy that symbol. While Batman's identity remains secret and his motives unknown to Gothamites, he represents hope in a city that has little to spare and embodies a pursuit of justice and further, a code of behavior that quite literally threatens these criminals' way of life. By throwing Gotham into chaos and testing the limits to which Batman holds himself, The Joker is not merely plying death and destruction but willfully destroying the philosophical foundations of organized society. The closest such examination another comic book-oriented film has ever attempted was the emotional throughline of the Spider-Man films. Peter Parker's struggle was almost exclusively personal, whereas Wayne not only has to find a way to maintain his moral compass, but consider what the repercussions of his heroism are to both the public and the criminals themselves."

"I believe in Harvey Dent."

"Welcome to a world without rules."

"Ritchie Coster as Chechen"

"“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.” “The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies. The key performance in the movie is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker. Will he become the first posthumous Oscar winner since Peter Finch? His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent classic “The Man Who Laughs” (1928). His clown's makeup more sloppy than before, his cackle betraying deep wounds, he seeks revenge, he claims, for the horrible punishment his father exacted on him when he was a child"

"In this universe, there is only one absolute: Everything freezes."

"No matter what they tell you, Mr. Bane, it is the size of your gun that counts."

"Alright everyone! Chill."

"Can you feel it coming? The icy cold of space. At 30,000 feet, your heart will freeze and beat no more."

"There was a lot of pressure from Warner Bros. to make Batman & Robin more family-friendly. We decided to do a less depressing Batman movie and less torture and more hero. I know I have been criticized a lot for this, but I didn't see the harm in that approach at all."

"If there's anybody watching this, that... let's say, loved Batman Forever, and went into Batman & Robin with great anticipation, if I've disappointed them in any way, then I really want to apologize. Because it wasn't my intention. My intention was just to entertain them."

"[The costume] was made by Jose Fernandez, who was our brilliant lead sculpture. If you look at Batman and Batman Returns, it was the genius, Bob Ringwood who created those suits, so by the time we got to Batman Forever, the rubber and techniques had gotten so sophisticated. If you look at when Michael Keaton appears in the first suit, you'll notice how large it is. It was brilliant but the best they could do at the time. By the time Batman Forever came around, rubber molding had become so much more advanced. So I said, let's make it anatomical and gave photos of those Greek statues and those incredible anatomical drawings you see in medical books. He did the nipples and when I looked at them, I thought, that's cool."

"I hate when people talk during the movie."

"You're not sending me to the cooler!"

"What killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age!"