Thoughts: The Dark Knight Rises

I am really going to try to not spoil anything for those of you who haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises. Please just understand that it is going to be very very hard.
Just twenty minutes before the movie began, my mother announced that we were going to go see TDKR. We rushed down to the movie theater, and I sat down to watch one of the greatest movies I have ever seen, ever.
It was different from the last one. The Dark Knight had a villain that believed in chaos. The Joker was surrounded by an air of finesse and theatricality. Everything he did was thought out, planned, and executed on time. Bane, however, the villain in this movie, is a villain that believes in terror and fear. Everything he does results in and panic and dread. The way that all three villains connected, and that everything in the plot was woven together was really well done.
Also, there was a sort of reassurance in The Dark Knight that Batman would come back. I mean, there was a third installment in the trilogy. He had to live, no matter how hard the battles were. but in this one, in TDKR, you never knew if Batman would live.
The characters were dynamic, and we were always uncovering more and more about them. We discovered their vulnerabilities, their desires, and their heritage. John Blake was a nice addition to the cast. Played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun, Inception), Blake was the one person in Gotham that believed in and wasn't tired of catching the criminals. He was someone who believed in justice, and was willing to get his hands dirty in order to find it. Gordon was tired, I think. Like Bruce Wayne, he was weighted down by the events in the last films. Christian Bale portrayed a different Batman. The Batman in the other movies were willing to go out and fight for Gotham. Batman, in TDKR was heavily burdened, and you could feel the weight of everything that happened to Bruce Wayne. As always, I loved Alfred, who is awesome and wise (and British), and would make the best grandfather ever. Miranda Tate was interesting, I think, and that's all I'm going to say about her (no spoilers!). I have to also talk about Bane. Tom Hardy did a good job at acting for Bane. The mask must have been hard to work with, because we couldn't see much of his facial expressions. But those fight scenes, wow. You could tell that he knew what he was doing (That's another thing I liked in the film. The action was part of the plot. It wasn't just for the sake of having some action).
The music was amazing, as usual. Any music by Hans Zimmer is always amazing. He did the music for Pirates of the Caribbean and Inception. The music he writes music that is powerful and new, and you can always distinguish his music in films, sort of like you can distinguish music by John Williams in movies.
It was a movie that really made you think. I was reminded of the ideas of revolution, terror, and about who to trust and love. How far is someone willing to go for you? And what would you do if Bane came to destroy your city? Join him? Or fight him? It's one of those things, you'll always say that you'll fight, but you never know what you'll really do until you are faced with the reality of it all. Hopefully, we'll never have to face anything like Bane.
I know that I will go see TDKR again. Christopher Nolan (the director) did something that I think only has been done with one other person: George Lucas. He made three films in a series that were all really amazing.  This one, The Dark Knight Rises... well, you'll just have to go see it to know how fantastic it really is.