That sound you hear is Warner Bros. opening the promotional floodgates for The Dark Knight Rises, which is the summer's biggest impending superhero movie, now that The Avengers has broken so many records and cleared the way for Christopher Nolan's climactic Batman movie.  Today, there are no fewer than six character posters for the sequel, two each for the Caped Crusader, the villainous Bane, and the adaptable Catwoman.

The third official poster for The Dark Knight Rises has appeared online.  As you know, Batman is exceptionally good at brooding and his home city of Gotham is exceptionally good at coming apart at the seams.  Both of these things are happening on the new one-sheet, with Batman a-brooding and Gotham going up in flames.

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.

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.

For all their epic sprawl, tick-tock precise storytelling, and self-seriousness, it's easy to forget that Christopher Nolan's Batman films are still big budget superhero movies.  That means that, no matter how unsmiling Christian Bale's Caped Crusader may inevitably be, The Dark Knight Rises will be accompanied by a merchandising bonanza that includes lunchboxes, stickers, PEZ dispensers, personal pleasure devices, and endless toys.  Today we have a handful of looks at some of those toys, which are varying degrees of ridiculous, but will be greedily gobbled up by fans of all ages nonetheless.

This morning you may have seen some images of an Incredible Hulk action figure or two from The Avengers.  Those pictures came from the floor of Toy Fair in London, and now, the collectible expo has revealed some promotional artwork for products tying in to this summer's other superhero epic, The Dark Knight Rises.

The products in question are from DC Direct, which creates not missile-fired action figures for tots, but higher-end busts and the like for collectors.  For the finale installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, DC Direct is manufacturing some new figures and busts based on Batman, Bane, and Catwoman, played respectively by Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, and Anne Hathaway.

"Hello, everyone.  I'm Batman.  You're probably familiar with my work brutalizing criminals as the subject of the very successful movies Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.  As you no doubt guessed, I'm a pretty busy guy; between fighting the ever-rising tide of wrongdoing in Gotham City, running a bajillion-dollar company, and brooding over the murder of my parents, I hardly ever get a minute to relax with some bath salts, wine, and a good book.  But I'm here today to tell you that I'm on the cover of a magazine!  Also, my buddies at Warner Bros have released three new official stills from The Dark Knight Rises, the forthcoming sequel where some dude in a muzzle beats the hell out of me.  Take a look, because you know you're jonesing for The Dark Knight Rises.  My movies are just so damn good."

Synopsis: Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ “The Dark Knight Rises” is the epic conclusion to filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Leading an all-star international cast, Oscar(R) winner Christian Bale (“The Fighter”) again plays the dual role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. The film also stars Anne Hathaway, as Selina Kyle; Tom Hardy, as Bane; Oscar(R) winner Marion Cotillard (“La Vie en Rose”), as Miranda Tate; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as John Blake. Returning to the main cast, Oscar(R) winner Michael Caine (“The Cider House Rules”) plays Alfred; Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon; and Oscar(R) winner Morgan Freeman (“Million Dollar Baby”) reprises the role of Lucius Fox. The screenplay is written by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer. The film is produced by Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan and Charles Roven, who previously teamed on “Batman Begins” and the record-breaking blockbuster “The Dark Knight.” The executive producers are Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan, Kevin De La Noy and Thomas Tull, with Jordan Goldberg serving as co-producer. The film is based upon characters appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. Batman was created by Bob Kane.

Anticipation for The Dark Knight Rises is such that within four days of the IMAX prologue debuting on just 42 North American screens and one day of the latest trailer showing up online, one persistent complaint already became something of a meme and a worry for Warner Bros.  That one major complaint amongst all the ecstatic hyperbole was the difficulty in understanding dialogue from Batman's new nemesis, the muzzled and musclebound Bane, played by Tom Hardy.  Franchise director Christopher Nolan declared that no major corrections to Bane's voice would be made, but it seems Warner Bros has issued a new audio mix for that six-minute IMAX prologue.