VIDEO: 'The Dark Knight Rises' Trailer Lands Online

Having already served as a tantalizing appetizer before the feast to the legion of Muggles that helped Harry Potter shatter the opening weekend box office record – ironically a record previously held up until now by The Dark Knight – the teaser trailer for director Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated conclusion to his exhilarating, ultra-violent superhero saga now makes its way to the Internet.

Once more starring Christian Bale as the cowled Caped Crusader, alongside returning series stalwarts Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, The Dark Knight Rises pits our tortured hero against new and ever-more dangerous foes. Adding her name to Nolan’s fine legacy is Anne Hathaway as the sultry and sardonic Catwoman, Selena Kyle, a big screen role first made famous by Michelle Pfeiffer in 1992’s Batman Returns and then made infamous by Halle Berry in 2004’s truly terrible Catwoman.

Also resurrected from one of the franchises previous clunkers is brutish behemoth Bane, played here by Tom Hardy, who was last witnessed under forgettable circumstances as a camp sideshow in the disastrous Batman & Robin. Also included in the line-up in fellow Inception alum Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who many touted for the role of The Riddler, as an ally in the Gotham City Police Department. Marion Cotillard rounds out the cast as Miranda Tate, an employee of Wayne Enterprises.

As the name implies, most teaser trailers are certainly not about the pleasin’, and this one is no exception. Much of the front end involves cannibalizing images from the trilogy’s first two installments, while the fresh footage largely comprises of a withered Commissioner Gordon meekly pleading with an unseen Bruce Wayne to don the batsuit and save Gotham City once more.

A final, tantalizing, shot glimpses Bane striding towards Batman with murderous intent, suggest that this face-off will be much more of the physically punishing variety than the cruel mind games offered by Heath Ledger’s Joker. Given that the thing Bane is most famous for on the page is snapping one incarnation of Batman over his knee like a dry twig, breaking his spine in the process and rendering him a paraplegic, we can surely expect one almighty smackdown to land on our screens next summer.

Watch the brand new teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises right here: