30 Greatest Dark Knight Rises Posters

The Official One

The Poster: A chill-inducing one sheet that has the mighty Bane striding away from a shattered Bat mask. Couldn’t be cooler if it tried.

Cool Detail: The broken Bat mask, which hints that Rises could feature Bane’s infamous back-breaking comic-book moment.

Art Attack

The Poster: An arty concoction that manages to include Batman, Bane and Gotham city. A multi-layered composition that reeks of style.

Cool Detail: The ‘deh-shay bah-sah-rah’ background, which cleverly clues in the film’s score.

Star Wars Style

The Poster: Sort of Dark Knight Rises reimagined in the Star Wars universe. Bane vs Darth Vader, anyone?

Cool Detail: The flying Batmobile, which may or may not be making an appearance in Rises . Given the title, we’d say it’s likely.

Bane

The Poster: All this one needs for impact is Bane. In his mask. Staring right into the pits of your soul.

Cool Detail: The mask is super-awesome, but those eyes have it – Bane really looks like he’s attempting to figure out the messiest way to kill you.

City Lights

The Poster: An old-school composition that more than slightly resembles a still from a set of Saul Bass movie credits.

Cool Detail: Wayne Enterprises, right there in the thick of it all.

Ensemble Me

The Poster: A brilliantly illustrated one sheet that brings all of our key characters together, somehow finding space for two shots apiece of Batman, Catwoman and Bane. Nice.

Cool Detail: Catwoman aboard the Tumbler, of course. Miaow.

Bright Spark

The Poster: An action-pose shot from the film, in which Bane rampages through swathes of Gotham City rioters.

Cool Detail: Is it just us, or does it look like Bane’s bulletproof here?

Bringing The World Down

The Poster: Batman watches on, battered but not beaten, as Gotham City falls to pieces around him. Figuratively and literally.

Cool Detail: It extends the ‘burning world’ imagery of The Dark Knight , pushing Gotham further into the bowels of hell.

Gargoyle Awesome

The Poster: Imagines Batman as a gargoyle, which comes with all sorts of lovely connotations – not least the fact that gargoyles can fly, giving power to the ‘Rises’ part of the title.

Cool Detail: It’s got comic-book influence all over it, which instantly makes it a cool cat.

Caught In The Headlights

The Poster: Catwoman strikes a coy pose as bats circle in the rain-lashed air behind her.

Cool Detail: It’s moody as hell, and miles away from Halle Berry’s version of the clawed minx. Which is always a good thing.

Crowd Fever

The Poster: Gotham City residents rise up in their hundreds to jeer Batman, who rests atop Wayne Enterprises.

Cool Detail: We know for a fact that this is a scene we're going to see in the movie, making the image all the more hysteria-stoking.

Perch With A View

The Poster: Batman watches over Gotham City. Wonder if he’ll answer the call from that apparently re-instated Bat signal?

Cool Detail: It’s all moody and blue, and that gargoyle is all kinds of special.

Bad Boy

The Poster: Bane again, all scuffed up and clearly heading into battle.

Cool Detail: That Bat carved into his back. Wonder if he needed a mirror to do that.

Purrrfect

The Poster: Focussing on Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, and hinting that the film’s title could also apply to the mysterious moggy.

Cool Detail: The stitches, which make us think of Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns . Which is always a good thing.

Cat Vs Bat

The Poster: Catwoman and Batman have a pose-off. The names-in-wrong-places crediting is a nice touch.

Cool Detail: This poster imagines Catwoman’s get-up anew. Claw blimey.

Dark Days

The Poster: Batman hangs his head as the rain pours down. We do like a bit of pathetic fallacy.

Cool Detail: An armed Gary Oldman in the background, clearly hunting the Bats post- Dark Knight .

Riddlesome

The Poster: A companion to the previous entry that installs Guy Pearce as The Riddler.

Cool Detail: Pearce as Riddler. Clearly this poster was created long before we knew Catwoman and Bane were the main villains.

Sin City

The Poster: Batman blends in with the city as it is blown to pieces.

Cool Detail: It looks like Batman has a new toy. Hurray!

Take Flight

The Poster: Takes the ‘hunted Batman’ imagery even further, as helicopters seek to trap our besuited hero.

Cool Detail: The crackling Bat symbol, in which Bats himself has taken to the air.

Snow Business

The Poster: A snowy affair, in which Catwoman surveys Gotham City.

Cool Detail: Catwoman’s breath crystallising in the chill air. Nice attention to detail.

Bat Crazy

The Poster: A bleached effort, in which Batman’s accompanied by a swarm of the creatures his suit was inspired by.

Cool Detail: That massive, circling swarm.

Flame On

The Poster: Before, the city was burning. Now it’s Batman who’s on fire.

Cool Detail: The flaming Batman symbol.

Mirror Mirror

The Poster: Another slick old school effort, with Catwoman appearing in mirror image, kissing airborne bats. As you do.

Cool Detail: The fact that the Wayne Enterprises building also looks like Batman himself, hunched over the city.

Bad Bane

The Poster: That first shot of Bane, tweaked to create a moody poster.

Cool Detail: The image seared into the building side.

Leg Up

The Poster: Catwoman shows us who’s boss by using the Bat symbol as a step. That’s sure to get a, uh, rise out of Batman.

Cool Detail: The red Bat signal almost looks like the Joker’s smile…

Hitting The Headlines

The Poster: Another poster that attempts to convince us Riddler’s involved in Rises . It almost makes us wish he was.

Cool Detail: The newspaper’s attention to detail, and the fact that it mentions Harvey Dent.

Target Practise

The Poster: A clever play on the end of Dark Knight , in which Batman has become a police target. We especially like the bullet-hole Bat symbol.

Cool Detail: The gun-wielding shadow. Who's that, then?

Propulsion

The Poster: The original, official teaser poster gives a fantastic sense of height, scale and gravitas.

Cool Detail: The Dark Knight poster imagery was all about burning, which echoed Joker’s explosion endeavours. The Rises poster is all about breaking things – definitely Bane’s MO.

Full Metal

The Poster: Grungry and impactful, as the Bat symbol is scorched into metal.

Cool Detail: The whole thing, really; a simplistic but effective use of colour and texture.

The Bats Back

The Poster: Batman wears his determined scowl as he prepares to fight the good fight again – presumably for the very last time.

Cool Detail: All those circling bats, which suggest Bat’s done something quite substantial to disrupt so many of the winged things.

PRODUCTS

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.