It’s been a summer of expectations. There was The Avengers, which ticked all the right boxes and made a truckload of dosh, and Prometheus, which disappointed most but still managed to ring a few tills. Now here comes the biggie: can Christopher Nolan see out his Bat trilogy in style? Can he make that so-far-elusive five-star superhero movie, or at least live up to the eye-popping standard he set with 2008’s The Dark Knight?

The answers are yes, no, and mostly. As its running time suggests (165 minutes!), The Dark Knight Rises is a sprawling, epic feast of a movie, stuffed to the gills with side characters, subplots and diversions. Yet there’s nothing here to match the intensity of Heath Ledger’s Joker, and the movie feels weaker for it.

We’re reintroduced to Bruce Wayne, aka Batman (Bale), living as a recluse, holed up in the east wing of Wayne Manor. But when marauding, mask-wearing psycho Bane (Hardy) muscles in with the intention of kick-starting a popular revolution, Bruce must don the cape and cowl once again. There’s also Anne Hathaway as a slinky, burgling Catwoman and lots of confusing financial shenanigans with the shareholders of Wayne Enterprises.

View our interview with The Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan

But when the Bat flies, such considerations go out the window. Nolan creates a grand, dirty, engrossing world, and his action sequences just hum. Predictable perhaps, but as our heroes swoop off into the sunset, we realise we’ve been witness to something truly impressive: a seven-year cinematic adventure that combined the epic and the personal in dizzying, inventive, sometimes perplexing, often enthralling, always imaginative ways.