And remember, The Avengers are not the enemy...

There's a new poster for The Dark Knight Rises online. In a twist on the awesome cliché of heroes walking away from explosions, Batman stands, brooding as usual, with his back to the fiery Bat-symbol, fists clenched, scowling. Batman is too angsty to care about looking cool; he just does it effortlessly. Perhaps he's torn up or even paralysed by what Bane's doing to Gotham, so he can't bear to look; or perhaps he's contemplating a terrible choice he'll have to make. Christopher Nolan's been clear about bringing the trilogy to a definitive conclusion with The Dark Knight Rises, and that having said what he wants to say in the Batman universe, he won't return to the franchise. As such, and given the dark and gritty tone of Nolan's films, filled with tragedy, moral ambiguity, and sacrifice, there's been speculation as to Batman's fate. Will he ultimately lay down his life to save the city he loves?

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Visually, it's reminiscent of one of the posters for The Dark Knight, with the burning Bat-symbol on the side of a building. The yellowy-red adds some colour to a poster which would otherwise (fittingly) be quite dark. While the poster looks fairly similar to the previous one for The Dark Knight Rises (and looks like it could even have been Photoshopped; not that fan-made posters are a bad thing, by any means), the Bat-symbol (created by the outline of Gotham's skyscrapers) seems to be on fire or exploding or something. Probably on fire, since that would make most sense of the tag-line "A fire will rise". They couldn't exactly say "The explosions will go boom" (though they'd probably get away with it for something like the Expendables franchise, which is wears its cheesiness on its sleeve).

While the marketing campaign for The Avengers was more bombastic and straightforwardly heroic, The Dark Knight Rises is taking an more moody, understated, but nonetheless an effective one. In essence, the differing marketing campaigns reflect the tones of their respective franchises.

With The Avengers breaking box office records, and audiences looking forward to both The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises in July, it looks like 2012 is going to be the Summer of Superheroes. (And The Avengers has, like, half a dozen superheroes.) To quote Summer Glau's character from Joss Whedon's Firefly, "It's getting very, very crowded!" Not that that's a bad thing. When it comes to blockbuster movies, superheroes are like explosions: you can never have too many of them. Also, they can display variety and nuance (superhero stories, anyway--but the best ones of those do tend to have explosions).

It's unlikely that The Dark Knight Rises will surpass The Avengers' incredible box office take, but it will no doubt do very, very well, especially considering the remarkable success of The Dark Knight. Both of Christopher Nolan's Bat-films so far are still highly regarded, and it looks like little will change in terms of overall quality, so anticipation for The Dark Knight Rises is high. However, The Avengers' phenomenal box office will be hard for any film to beat. Audiences really responded to the old-fashioned sense of heroic adventure, so probably the next film to have a realistic shot at beating it will be the first instalment of The Hobbit. Director Peter Jackson is returning, from the beloved, acclaimed, and extremely successful Lord of the Rings trilogy, so it has a lot of built-in interest, as with The Dark Knight Rises, but it's also an epic fantasy adventure, similar to Lord of the Rings but lighter in tone. So the more upbeat nature of The Hobbit could give it an edge over The Dark Knight Rises.

In any case, some people make it seem like there's some kind of inherent rivalry between The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises; as if rooting for one means you have to root against the other. Which is ridiculous. First of all, the entire point of The Avengers is about the characters putting aside their squabbles with each other and learning to work as a team. (Plus superheroes fighting things.) Secondly, the two films work in completely different ways. It's apples and oranges. Or Hulks and Banes. Or Batmans and Captain Americas. Or something. (Though Batman and Iron Man are kind of similar: in some ways, if not in temperament.) Why pit Marvel against DC; Joss Whedon against Christopher Nolan? Can't you just love awesome things and other, differently awesome things?

The Dark Knight Rises will be shown in IMAX, with over an hour of footage shot in the format: the most of any film to date. Given how stunning an experience The Dark Knight was in IMAX, The Dark Knight Rises will surely be a must-see on the huge screen.

The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and is released on July 20, 2012.

See also:

An analysis of the new posters for The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Knight Rises sells out: of IMAX tickets
UK's biggest IMAX screen won't show The Avengers
Andrew Garfield wants to play Spider-Man in The Avengers 2
The Amazing Spider-Man trailer online
Lewis, Tolkien could be played by Jude Law, Tom Hardy, or Henry Cavill?

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