The Dark Knight Rises teaser poster: A dash of Inception, a hint of bureaucratic oversight

Like Dali with his melting clocks or Family Circus creator Bil Keane with his hidden Satanic imagery, Christopher Nolan has obviously found his favored motif and stuck with it. This just-released teaser poster for The Dark Knight Rises serves up a bent perspective of a crumbling cityscape that looks very familiar, reminiscent as it is of the posters for both Inception and The Dark Knight. It also offers plenty of room for inkblot-like interpretation: Is the bat-shaped clearing at the apex—the only clear sky in sight—a symbol of hope, offering a way out of this grim devastation? Or does it signify that this is all actually Batman’s fault, sort of like how the guy destroyed an entire elevated train system and nearly all of its surrounding real estate just to stop one dude in Batman Begins, never giving a second thought for the months (if not years) its reconstruction might drag on, thereby tying up thousands of commuters who have the sort of real jobs and deadlines and family commitments that a self-absorbed billionaire playboy superhero obviously doesn’t understand? And what, now they have to contend with their skyscrapers raining down boulders from the sky? And whose job was it to reinforce the concrete at the top of those skyscrapers, and maybe ensure against possible boulder-raining contingencies, anyway? Seems like the real supervillain here is a lack of forethought. Anyway, this movie comes out a year from now.