What's kind of like the NBA Playoffs?  The war to control the fictitious Gotham City in The Dark Knight Rises, the climactic installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.  Both the movie and the playoffs feature a man dressed up as a giant Bat using a high tech arsenal to fight crime, a burglarizing woman dressed like a slinky cat, and a monomaniacal villain who you can bet won't win out in the end.  Okay, so the playoffs don't have those first two, but the inhabitants of Cleveland could persuasively argue that LeBron James fits the bill for the last one.

With a certain Marvel Studios superhero team-up making money hand over fist in record-breaking amounts of time, there's been a lot of discussion about the box office fate of the third and final installment in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.  All this talk of comparative opening weekends is not only premature, it misses the basic and undeniably happy point that this a summer in which we're treated to both The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises.

Synopsis: The conclusion to Christopher Nolan's hugely successful Batman trilogy concludes the story that started with Batman Begins and continued through The Dark Knight.  Eight years after the last film, Bruce Wayne faces his greatest challenge when the villainous Bane comes to Gotham, using terrorist tactics to take over the city and break the Batman.  To emerge triumphant, the hero will need to marshal the forces of order, including Catwoman and the police force.

If you thought you'd have to wait until your butt was in a seat at The Avengers to see the new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, you were mistaken.  The third trailer for Christopher Nolan's final installment in his Batman trilogy is online in full right here, right now.

Things have been pretty quiet on the Dark Knight Rises front as of late.  With Marvel and Disney's orgiastic superhero crossover The Avengers monopolizing our superhero hype attentions, Warner Bros has wisely opted to let Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor have their time.  The second full theatrical trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is set to debut with The Avengers this Friday, though, so Batman's about to start getting his hype on all over again.

While we've been happily inundated with hype-building material from a certain Marvel and Disney joint, the promotional juggernaut for a big, bat-loving DC Comics hero has been quietly getting ready to bombard audiences.  The Dark Knight Rises is arguably the most anticipated movie of the summer, and it's appropriate that a new trailer will precede the other most anticipated movie, The Avengers.  When the final Christopher Nolan-directed Batman adventure arrives, it will boast more than a full hour of footage shot on IMAX cameras.

The Avengers premiered last night and Twitter promptly lit up with enthusiastic responses to Marvel and Disney's big team-up.  As if in a calculated move, a crop of new The Dark Knight Rises images are floating about online to make audiences conflicted about which summer superhero movie they're has them in the biggest mouth-foaming fervor.  The newly rated PG-13 capper to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy has been in post-production for months, and we've not seen much from the film, so lap up these seven new stills.

There's well over a year until Man of Steel arrives at a theater near you, but it's not to early to reveal the Superman reboot's official logo via a banner baring a familiar symbol.  That would be a new variation on the iconic "S" that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creation has worn on his chest ever since his first appearance almost 75 years ago.

Okay, let's make this clear right out the gate: this whole post exists in spoiler territory.  It's been quite some time since we've heard anything about The Dark Knight Rises.  Long past are the days of consistently spoilerific set photos and what have you, as Christopher Nolan is deep in post-production on the finale to his Bat-trilogy, but today Warner Bros. has confirmed a certain long-rumored character appearance in the film.  Again, if you're not down with a spoiler just stop reading right now.  Like right at this moment.  Read no more.

It's been awhile since we heard much from Man of Steel, the new Superman movie currently being directed by Zack Snyder.  In fact, the last thing we posted on the reboot was a picture of Henry Cavill kindly posing for a picture with a young lad whilst wearing his full Superman gear.  Two months later, there are some new, albeit bite-sized, info-nuggets on the film from the guy who designed that costume, Michael Wilkinson.