I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the senseless tragedy of the shooting at the Aurora, Colo., theater last week. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.

Despite the shadow of this tragedy, “Rises,” the third installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman saga, rose to the top of the box office in its opening weekend.

In “Rises,” it has been several years since anyone has seen Batman (Christian Bale). At the end of 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” Batman took the rap for District Attorney Harvey “Two Face” Dent’s crimes so that Dent could be a beacon of hope.

Due to this lie, the city seems to be sailing on serene waters. However, as Selina “Catwoman” Kyle (Anne Hathaway) says, “A storm is coming” — the most devastation Gotham has ever seen, and it could break the city as well as the bat.

Ever since I saw Nolan’s 2000 film “Memento,” he has been my favorite director. His 2010 sci-fi epic “Inception” cemented my admiration. “Rises” has many things in common with Inception. The best thing they share is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In “Rises,” Joe portrays beat cop John Blake, who personifies Nolan’s ability to make a comic-book inspired film feel real.

So many fans were afraid Hathaway would sink as Catwoman. Wow, were we wrong. Likewise, it would take a real-life Titan to follow-up the late Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning performance as The Joker in “The Dark Knight,” but that’s exactly what Nolan gives us with Tom Hardy’s Bane. He’s practically a 2012 version of Darth Vader.

Gordon-Levitt’s scene stealing, Nolan’s superb storytelling, the script’s ingenious interweaving of classic bat-characters into a new mythology and frightening echoes of our current socio-economic climate all make me … a very big fan!

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