Christopher Nolan's latest Batman flick features an injured Bruce Wayne leaning on a cane, Anne Hathaway in red lips and a leather body suit as Catwoman, and a Gotham City football game interrupted by explosions and mayhem.
Nolan unveiled footage from "The Dark Knight Rises" on Tuesday at CinemaCon, a Las Vegas conference for theater owners.
The various scenes showed collapsing bridges, rolling army tanks and Christian Bale returning as an older, more weathered Batman. Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman are also reprising their previous roles in the franchise.
Nolan, known on set as "the governor," said he wanted to finish his interpretation of the classic Batman story "in the biggest way possible."
"We've been working on this story for nine years," he said. "And so it's with mixed feelings that we finish this thing."
Nolan said his goal was to create a "spectacle" that makes viewers excited the moment they enter a theater.
"What defines cinema, and what gets people out of the house to watch it, is spectacle," he said.
Newcomers for the third installment in the franchise include Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Gordon-Levitt, Hardy and Cotillard also appeared in Nolan's 2010 film "Inception."
The preview Tuesday was dark, like so many scenes in Nolan's Batman vision.