The first full-length trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has been released by Warner Bros. and you can now tune it (and download it) from iTunes.

Scheduled for release in theaters July 2012, The Dark Knight Rises has seen quite an extensive promotional campaign and anyone that went out and caught the IMAX version of Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol were treated to an eight-minute prologue to the film. [That prologue was part of a bigger digital campaign for Mission: Impossible and helped draw big healthy business over the weekend.]

If you’re one the masses that does not use iTunes, we got you covered with the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises below, courtesy of Apple.

The Dark Knight Rises also stars Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Josh Pence, Daniel Sunjata, Diego Klattenhoff, Burn Gorman, Nestor Carbonell, Alon Aboutboul, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, Brett Cullen, Chris Ellis and Joey King.

LaTwan Holland was a writer for a local under ground newspaper, The Spinner Rack that covered comics, video games, anime and related movies and is currently the Producer of the DIRECT EDITION. To find out the latest that’s happening with LaTwan and the Direct Edition check them out at the DIRECT EDITION podcast, blog and you tube site.

With countless photos pouring in from the weekend of shooting of The Dark Knight Rises, fans can finally get their clearest look at Anne Hathaway in costume as Catwoman.

Certainly appears to marry elements of Darwyn Cooke’s Catwoman costume, as well as a nod to the 60′s Batman series with the mask and cat ears. Too bad Anne Hathaway’s still playing her, though.

THE FIGHTER releases in theaters this December.

As always, email us your questions or comments at pcs@popcultureshock.com or give us a call at 1-888-817-5766 and we’ll address your feedback on the next show.

Common plays Barnes a resistance soldier and John’s right-hand man. He’s a spiritual man who sees Judgement Day as outlined in the Bible, John is a messiah and Skynet is the anti-christ. Moon Bloodgood plays Blair Williams, Connor’s pilot and is the rough and tough female character so prevalent in the Terminator films.

Working with director, McG

Bloodgood: I’m a type A personality so I love his energy, he’s really bright. He’s a hard-working, passionate and he challenges me.

Common: I see how directors treat their crew to see whether he’s a good leader. Like Moon said, “You respect and love passion,” and that man has passion. McG is a good leader and a great communicator.

The pacing of Salvation as a war film instead of the prior installments being science fiction films

Bloodgood: I feel like they cut the fat. I’m a big fan of European movies and what they do, and you’re right, if it’s a war movie you have to be careful that you don’t do that too much.

Common: They cut a scene of mine that was too fat [Laughs] But that’s good. I was just going on and on. In this film you feel an urgency even when the characters are stopping and talking, like “We’ve got to get this shit done.” When the machines are coming to attack people, there’s that urgency and I think that’s the rhythm that’s there. You still feel a certain humanity in the layers. You don’t just see action, you get a gist of the human struggle.

On the Resistance and The Military of the Future

Bloodgood: There is a command structure and there’s different points to the resistance. For instance when I came in they told me there was a radio that helps us all communicate with each other because we don’t want Skynet to know what we’re doing but we need to know what they’re up to. Their technology is obviously more advanced than ours so there are different points where communication is cut.

And we had a military advisor on-set but it’s a different time so you don’t adhere to the same codes. I had to have this whole post-apocalyptic look, we’re all expressing ourselves the way we’re dressing, but not in a superficial or corny way but as a way to prepare for war.

On her Moon’s nude scene

Bloodgood: I am a woman, I have boobs, it’s a beautiful shot, it wasn’t at all gratuitous, I’m not afraid to say no if I didn’t feel it was right and I’ve done that. But this was beautiful and about the world ending and getting naked and wanting to connect with someone.

Bryce Howard plays Kate Connor, John’s wife and is carrying their child. Her role is vital in that John’s wall of trust is nearly impossible to pass. She is the one he trusts and depends on the most and is sure to be of great importance to the resistance. Fresh off of Star Trek’s set is Anton Yelchin, who plays the resistance soldier, Kyle Reese. Yelchin looked to Michael Biehn’s character in The Terminator despite his portrayal of the younger John Connor admirer.

Bryce Howard on playing a general’s daughter

Howard: I spoke with a lot of family members who are in the military so they’re familiar with fear, and the possibility of losing everything they know at any moment. So I feel that those individuals have a very strong constitution that I wanted to bring to the character.

On the empowered women in the Terminator franchise

Howard: I feel Moon carries the torch for Linda Hamilton even though my character is strong in her own respect, she’s also seven months pregnant and it would have been irresponsible to have her *makes shotgun sound effect* [Laughing]. Know what I mean? There’s a little bit of that, but nothing too memorable. That’s Moon’s main element that she was this passionate, strong, intelligent woman leading. It identifies the franchise.

Yelchin: I also think we have a very young empowered woman, Jadagrace.

Howard: Oh my god, yes.

Yelchin: She’s plays Kyle Reese’s paternal character. The first time you meet her character she’s holding a shotgun and she’s seven years old. It carries that tradition on.

Howard: I also feel this film in particular is about how John Connor become the man and myth we had heard about. Although I think McG was mindful of the expectations were in terms of empowered femininity it was imperative to see Christian’s portrayal come to the forefront.

The mystery of Marcus Wright and his relationship with Kyle Reese

Yelchin: There’s no scene between Marcus and Kyle where he talks about what he is. But we felt there had to be a moment where they acknowledge that and it was Kyle Reese’s duty as a human being to either understand it or maybe misunderstand it. But the complexity to that emotion is huge. They’re friends but Marcus is Kyle’s own paternal figure. it’s an interesting dynamic to play.

This is McG‘s most ambitious project. The young director’s filmography highlights include the recent Charlie’s Angels and We Are Marshall but if he’s successful this weekend and the following weeks, Terminator could see another trilogy. Resurrecting a popular science fiction franchise without its biggest star presents a challenge but what Terminator: Salvation has is the future, the dark aftermath of Judgement Day and a full blown-out war of survival between humans and machines. McG also has Christian Bale.

What with the recent controversy with X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaking out to the internet unfinished, here’s what McG thinks about sharing footage with press and fans at conventions while in the middle of post-production.

McG: I love this movie, and I take it seriously that the world is waiting to see it done properly. It’s a big responsibility. There is some trepidation there but I’m taking a leap of faith that you (the fans) are the passionate ones. You are the ones that care, lets all share in the filmmaking process. I think the audience is vary savvy and understands where the CG pencil kicked in and what was done practically in a tactile capacity that I feel very confident in sharing works-in-progress. Every time I’ve been transparent and honest about what this film is, people go from, “Fuck, McG!” to a place of, “Hey, this guy is taking it very seriously. He’s out to deliver what we want him to deliver.” I’m not saying I’m making the right choice or not, but being transparent and honest seems to be the right course of action thus far.

The first Terminator having a rating below R

McG: We never once gave a thought to rating while making this film. You think Christian (Bale) would say, “I need to taylor my performance to a rating.” He doesn’t know how to do that. I don’t want to do that. Having said that, if the film is PG-13, the Dark Knight was PG-13 which I would regard it as without compromise.

What is Skynet’s role in Salvation?

McG: Skynet is indeed very tricky. They tried to kill Sarah Connor with their biggest gun, the T-800, they tried to kill John with their biggest gun T-1000. Now they’re trying to kill Kyle and lure all of them together in Skynet in the spirit of getting it done not by thinking bigger-bigger gun, but by thinking radically, differently approaching a new way to achieve the objective of Skynet which is to kill John Connor.

Inspiration for War

McG: The number one inspiration was Kubrick’s Paths of Glory which was shown with great regularity back at base camp. But of course Apocalypse Now, Platoon had a tremendous effect on me because I saw it right when I was 15 or 16 thinking, “Shit, in two years, I’m that guy.” Children of Men in a certain futuristic war movie. In a world of duress, and a world of grit. We’re at war with the machines. It’s hard to get water and we’re all living in subterranean facilities. In that respect there’s a lot to be said about the Matrix films, in particularly the first one that Andy and Larry (Wachowski) cooked up. These are all influences.

How the current climate of technology altered the script

McG: That’s funny because that’s the reason to make the movie the future war. What was once science fiction in the 1970′s and 80′s is here. I have a blackberry in my pocket that has artificial intelligence. If I spell the wrong word, if I use the wrong syntax it will correct me. By definition that’s artificial intelligence. If I have a bad heart, they’ll give me a new one made out of plastic. That is very, very interesting. And most compelling is, if I’m depressed, the days of “Tell me about your father, was he mean to you?” are over. Here’s some serotonin re-up inhibitors and you’re just going to feel better in two weeks. We don’t need to talk about a goddamn thing. That’s just very terrifying that we’ve come to live in a world where that is all real. We can deconstruct the human genetic code, clone a sheep (arguably a human) make a 70 year-old woman pregnant, where’s the limit?

Wherein does humanity lie? Christopher Reeve became paralyzed from the neck down would any of us regard him less of a man? No, probably more from the courage he exerted. My point is that it’s not in his arm, or left ankle. It exists in somewhere in this magical place of brain, which is a collection of neural firings that will one day be mapped by a computer and we’ll be able to interface with. It’s a scary commentary about the reality of having a soul and what is it that makes us human. Machines got to the place of intelligence where they were able to say for the interest of self-preservation this (humans) is no longer necessary. That’s not impossible. In a great many ways James Cameron is a survivalist who is rather convinced that moment is going to happen.

Ernie Estrella

Terminator: Salvation will open wide May 20th, at midnight screenings at a theater near you.

Feature: A

One of the several problems with 80′s and 90′s is that they resembled the era of Batman comics of the 1960′s, a swash-buckling tycoon fighting colorful characters. The embarrassing television show was surely still a stinging influence. But anyone who’s read Batman in the last twenty to thirty years knows it has not been written like that since those times, and it may be one of the grittiest of superhero comics. Today he is a compulsive and paranoid man, relentless in ridding evil in Gotham City. The man never takes a night off, even the X-Men had issues where they just took a break, well Batman’s never done that since I’ve been reading comics and when Batman Begins was released in 2005, it was the first time we could say that if Batman actually existed in our world, this is how it would go down. Director Christopher Nolan buries the roots of Dark Knight in the real world once again, a dark and brutal environment where people live in fear and despair, constantly conscious of terror, corruption underneath a bearing cloud of dimming hope. Someone as extreme as Batman could only excel in a setting like this.

If you haven’t seen the film already, Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has begun to put a stranglehold on the the crime in Gotham until the Joker (Heath Ledger) shows up, stealing money from the mob and crime syndicate in Gotham. The unpredictable and loose cannon that’s Joker, offers his services to kill Batman in return he gets half of their money. What they don’t know is that this maniac isn’t motivated by lining his pockets with the green, but would rather prove the point that everyone can be corrupted even the best of men.

Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Gotham’s public attorney is being ushered into the town as their “white knight” to rid the city of its scum, the legal way. Involved with Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall), Wayne’s main squeeze in Batman Begins, Dent stands in the way of Bruce’s happiness, but is also the champion of a better Gotham. Wayne lends his support to Dent with the hopes of being able to shelve the cape and cowl for good, but the Joker has other plans. With the help of Alfred (Sir Michael Caine), Sgt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Lucious Fox (Morgan Freeman) Batman takes on the Joker and ultimately what Dent will become.

Ledger’s performance is a first rate show stopper playing the Joker; a car without brakes, never knowing where and what he’s going to do. He never turns down the volume, even for a second and dominates the screen whenever he appears. The broken cackle, the smeared facepaint, and the extreme method acting. It’s sure to end the legacy of clowns and children’s parties for good. The way that the character arcs of Wayne, Dent, and Dawes play out is a thing of beauty and the Joker is the catalyst for it all. He’s not only impulsive but explosive. He acts, and everyone reacts. Assisted by the wonderful Hans Zimmer and James Howard Newton score, his presence is always felt and gets underneath your skin.

Not to be lost in the Joker hoopla, is the real story of the Dark Knight: is the rise and fall of Harvey Dent. If a man as good as him can be torn down to his darkest inner being, then what are we all capable of? Are we all susceptible to resisting that side of us when under the worst of circumstances? The promotion teasers and pre-production campaign began with Dent and ended with preserving his legacy. Wayne, Dawes, and even Gordon offered mere support and while Joker was the driving force, Dent’s story held it all together and loses it all. Tragic and pessimistic, the title of the film is a fitting way to describe the present global climate as well as the tone set by Nolan and crew.

Time will tell if this is Nolan’s final Batman film, when a film makes nearly a billion dollars globally, more will surely come with or without him. I’m not ashamed to say I’m greedy to want to see one more Nolan film, because of what he’s accomplished with Batman Begins and Dark Knight. He’s the type of director who wants to make a statement or explore something deeper with a Batman film, and it’s my pure speculation that there was indeed a third film planned, and it was to feature the Joker again, especially with his final demise unknown. But instead of thinking of what might happen or what might have been, what Nolan and Ledger have left film and comic book fans alike, something truly sinister and beautiful.

Presentation: C-

As far as creativity goes, the total package of the Dark Knight’s pretty underwhelming. The packaging consists of A foiled/cardboard slipcase fits over the basic blu-holder with a swing hinge that holds two of the three discs. Funny Joker scribbles decorate the back cover text and you’d expect to see that echoed in the menus. Nope. The menus are an absolute stinker. Nothing animated, no loading screen, no music, not even a screensaver. Based on where you buy it packaging can vary depending on how much more you want to pay for it. Mine was packaged with a plastic bust of Batman’s cowl, but I’ve seen others packaged with a Batpod, or a Joker Henchmen bust.

Video: A+

Most of Dark Knight is shot in 2.40:1 ratio so there are black bars on the top and bottom. When the picture fills the widescreen, the aspect ratio changes to 1.78:1 signaling the change to the IMAX scenes which are largely establishing shots of Gotham (Chicago) and all of big action moments. It was difficult in the theater to see just which shots were filmed in IMAX but now you can see whenever there is a change in aspect ratio, that signals the change. The IMAX scenes have even more clarity because there’s so much more information on the negative since the film is huge compared to standard film stock. Tokyo at night is just stunning with clarity beyond belief. From the rooftops you can clearly see cars driving down below or in Gotham you can make out all of the individual windows of the sky scrapers and even the tops of heads from helicopter panning shots. This is the first time IMAX has been used in action sequences because of the physical difficulties in working with the large format, but they did make grand scenes larger than life, and the results are awesome in today’s home theaters.

Audio: A-

The 5.1 Dolby True-HDsoundtrack has a nice balance of resounding thuds and immersive sound. The dialogue though, especially Bale’s modulated gravel voice of Batman comes out clear and distinctive. Other blu-rays have much more to offer in terms of audio reference material, but the opening scene with Hans Zimmer’s score and the now famous chase scene on the lower roads of Chicago is sure to be a test chapter for many. Included is a English 5.1 Dolby Digital track, an English with Descriptive Narration, for the blind and hard of hearing which is just a surreal experience if you’ve never heard one before, and French, Spanish.

Special Features: B

Disc One

Most of what can be said about the features can be summed up in the Focus Points (1:04:00) vignettes that go behind the “epic” nature of various scenes like Shooting in Imax, the Bank Heist prologue, the Honk Kong building jump, the Batpod, the hospital explosion, the truck flip, and many others. Each of them last anywhere from a minute to over seven. I found the one I watched the most (four times to be exact) was the development of the score and most specifically Joker’s one-note theme music. Composter Hans Zimmer shows his creative process and complete access to his world. This one actually had video clips as well as many of these Focus Points are production stills with narration by Nolan, Zimmer, Conductor James Newton Howard, Visual Effects Supervisor Nick Davis, Richard King, Sound Set Designer, Paul Jennings, Stunt Coodinator and Christian Bale. Make sure to see how one of four mountable IMAX cameras in the world gets demolished in the sub Wacker chase scene. This feature can also be viewed in the old school branching method where when a visual prompt flashes, you can be taken to the special, but believe me, it’s much better in one complete sitting. After seeing how Universal integrates material like this into the film shows me this can be better (and be completely in HD) so while a lot of this is great material, there’s more creative ways to package it.

I’m happy to report that the BD-Live features are quite good considering much of what’s available in this online blu-ray feature has been to this point short of worth mentioning. In the media menu are several playable shorts. Two motion comics: The Shadow of Ra’s Al Ghul and the award-winning, Mad Love take the comics and animates the panels along with with voice actors. Each motion comic is split into 5-7 chapters. Two clips that looked to be on the Focus Points extras on disc one were saved for BD-Live. Harvey Dent’s Themecontinues the conversations with Zimmer and Newton Howard. The longest and most interest clip was the Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard Premiere Performance, which was the live performance of the Dark Knight theme complete with light display in front of the premiere audience. One special that was a waste was the sounds of the Batpod vignette; which can be seen on disc one.

Two interactive BD-Live features boasted on this disc are community screenings where you can schedule a time to meet up with your friends and family across the globe to watch the film together and chat through it. The other is the ability to record your own video and audio commentary (to make up for the absence of one by Christopher Nolan and others) which sounds at first to be pretty lame but having seen what some people have done, it looks to be a fun thing to do if you’ve got enough creativity. I saw one where a guy don’s a bat cowl and commentates on the scene where Batman confronts Joker in the “box” and the fan does it in character as if he’s Batman telling you what was going on in his head during that scene as if it was real. And for those who registered their disc early on, may have gotten the opportunity to watch the film with Christopher Nolan and ask him questions Thursday December 18th 2008. No word of any future interactive screenings.

Disc Two

Behind the Story HD are two very excellent featurettes that interview several familiar faces to comic readers, authors, and critics with clips of Batman art throughout the years. There are subtitles available in English for the Hearing Impaired as well as French and Spanish.

The first, Batman Tech (45:59) sees whether or not Batman’s gadgets and tools has real world applications or inspirations for example in the military. Everything from his costume, to the utility belt, to the Batmobile is dissected by curators of the CIA museums, scientists, professors, and field experts, Christopher Nolan, former editor/writer Len Wein, current DC editor-in-chief, Dan DiDio, Lois Gresh co-author of Science of Superheroes, producer Charles Roven, and even Arthur St. Antoine, editor-at-large of Motor Trend Magazine. There’s not a fatty part to this special and HD fans will get a kick out of the Batsuit section where base jumpers glide down the side of a mountain at high speed and a dangerous proximity to cliffs to show whether Batman could really decent into a city with just a suit.

The second featurette is the insightful and highbrow Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight (46:02) gathering professors of psychology, DC’s Batman editorial greats Paul Levitz, Denny O’Neil, Wein, and DiDio, Robin Rosenberg (the author of the Psychology of Superheroes) and Foresnic Specialists. In the 4 years of working at a comic book shop, I may be able to piece from several discussions enough to rival what’s discussed here in less than an hour. None of this is very groundbreaking if you’re a longtime reader but it’s a fascinating collection of real world experts and authors who attempt to get at the center of what Batman has come to be in the whole lexicon of superhero comics, a psychological look into a complex madman and the equally mad men and women he chases at night. Fear, consequence, self-regulation, and vigilanteism are all explored as the equation that makes up Batman as well as a parallel drawn to Theodore Roosevelt which I’ve personally never heard before. Batman’s rogue gallery is then diagnosed and compared to some of the most notable criminals of our day.

Six very well-produced shorts of the Gotham TV show, Gotham Tonight (46:41) can be viewed altogether as one clump or as separate episodes. These original webisodes were part of the online hype machine, a faux hybrid of the “CNN” and “Entertainment Tonight” of Gotham doing “investigative” and tabloid news. The first in particular, Election Night is pretty clever especially if you pay attention to the running ticker below. The other exposes are about Wayne, Dent, Gordon, and a who’s who of the Gotham baddies. Perhaps best eaten in small bites rather than the whole, Gotham Tonight is pretty amusing but is one the excessive side.

I don’t normally rave about Galleries but some of these are downright haunting. There are four to view, either in a timed slideshow that can be controlled, or one by one. The first is every Joker card designed by Phyllis Lehmer (9:44) 73 in all. The detail in these cards are really cool to look at as most of them don’t get to be seen at all or get such brief camera time. In the Concept Art (7:44) are 60 plus grisly mug shots of Joker’s Henchmen by Lindy Hemming and Drawn by Rob Bliss and tech drawings of Batman’s vostume, vehicles, and gadgets. The lesser interesting just because they’ve been seen so much are the Theatrical Posters and Billboards (1:36) and the Production Stills (11:52). One can “Play all” the three Trailers and six TV Spots (8:46) or view them separately. Each trailer reveals more and more but I never found them to be memorable because I always felt they showed too much of the Chicago street scene and the Joker who should have been shown as a big reveal in the final trailer. I actually enjoyed the six TV Spots even more than the trailers because they revealed less.

Disc Three

Just the Digital Video Dischere, good for laptops, PSPs, and portable media players and nothing else.

So there’s some very good, but for a film as magnanimous as this, I really expected much more. The utilization of BD-Live is as creative as I’ve seen, but I can’t help but feel that there should have been some type of tribute or something about Ledger’s performance, or look into how to portray the direction of Joker and Two-Face, the real stars of this film. Also absent is how Two-Face was done, c’mon WB, answer the elementary questions at least. The total package just felt incomplete and you can see on the BD-Live content that there is more that’s available, and blu-ray CAN hold much more than what we’re given so I know more can be done and I’m not happy I’ll have to wait for another time to see any of it.

Overall Shock Value: A-

The Dark Knight is going to move a lot of blu-rays and players this holiday season and I’m not one to step in the way of that. It’s a fabulous film flexing a lot of muscle in high def with a lip-smacking audio mix and a stunning transfer. It’s not as loaded with extras as one might think but double-dipping is inevitable and there’s no good reason to wait for that day to come. There’s nearly nothing mentioned about Ledger’s (nor Eckhart’s) performance and perhaps a reactionary post-Academy Awards “Collector’s Edition” could be in the future. The story of his last performance may still has more chapters left in it as of the date of this review. Who knows what accolades he’ll earn at the end of the year, if any, but it’s undeniable that Ledger gave one of the most, if not THE most memorable performance of 2008. We were left behind a memorable performance by an actor who was just beginning to catch the world’s attention. I highly recommend the Dark Knight, a deep psychological thriller hell-bent on giving viewers are harsh and cruel alternative to the typical comic book film; one where we can pause and let linger on not just the fight between good and evil but the darkness within each and every one of us and the resistance let it consume us whole.