Okay, I know he’s the Dark Knight and all. And The Dark Knight was a reasonably dark film. (Still, perhaps, not as dark as Tim Burton’s entries into the franchise, but nowhere near the excruciating kiddie razzle-dazzle of Batman & Robin, which has aged even more poorly than expected.)

Still, the new Dark Knight Rises poster is super dramatic and menacing! (See the full-sized pic below.)

This looks more like a poster for something like Raging Bull than a comic book movie, which I wholly approve of. I love that the success of The Dark Knight is allowing Christopher Nolan to push some boundaries for how adult a superhero aimed at mass audiences can be. He’d never get away with this if he hadn’t made the third highest-grossing film of all time.

Hinting that Batman’s gonna die in the poster? Edgy stuff!

(For a summer blockbuster, anyway.)

[Spotted over at Slash Film.]