Christopher Nolan’s Greatest Ever Batman Moments!

It's finally here! The biggest cinematic release of the year!

Forget about The Avengers, they're all too chummy to be taken seriously, whilst The Amazing Spider-Man's Peter Parker would rather be writing poetry and stalking Gwen Stacey than fighting crime. And the new Bourne movie? Please, I wouldn't trust that guy to remember where we parked.

No, it's all about Christopher Nolan's final installment to his Batman franchise, The Dark Knight Rises. Trailers, clips, viral footage and featurettes can only get you so far, now it's time to see if he can deliver.

But let us not forget that it's been one hell of a ride up until this point. Whatever happens, we can look back on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight as stupendous pieces of cinema, even if Nolan somehow pulls a Coppola and messes up the third movie.

Here are the greatest moments from Batman's two most recent efforts.

Batman vs The Joker - Heath Ledger's performance has already gone down in infamy as one of the greatest of all time. You can't take your eyes away from him throughout The Dark Knight. You only really get to sense his greatness once he has gone up alongside Christian Bale's Batman in his police cell, they have a tremendous vibrancy between them both as they exchange verbal and mental blows with the caped crusader finally getting to grips with just how insane his nemesis really is.

Two Face is revealed - Harvey Dent was always going to regret uttering the imortal line, "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain," and so it proved when he turned over in his hospital bed to reveal his horrible injurys. Dent turend into a vengeful beast because of his wounds and Rachel's death with the great man being turned into a heinous villain for the remainder of the film.

Bank Heist & Magic Trick - One of the greatest introductions in modern cinematic history sees The Joker kill each of his cohorts as he robs a bank and then seamlessly drives his getaway school bus into the stream of cars. However it is his speech in front of a hoard of criminals that leaves the longest impression and the way he gets rid of a pencil should not be tried at home.

Why do we fall? - And so the Batman mythos was born, this opening gambit is what has set Christopher Nolan's trilogy apart from other superhero movies. Thomas Wayne climbs down a well to save his son and tells his son that people fall, "So we can learn how to pick ourselves up." And boy does Bruce run with this theory.