WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEW BATMAN

"The Dark Knight Rises" is in theaters at midnight tonight. The movie runs two hours and 45 minutes long, which should put you in bed sometime after 3:00 a.m.

The PG-13 ending to Christopher Nolan's Bat trilogy is the only new movie hitting theaters this week. The action picks up eight years after the events of the last movie, when Batman took down both the Joker and Two-Face.

At the end of "The Dark Knight", he took the blame for Harvey Dent's death and became a fugitive to preserve Dent's anti-crime legacy. But now, there's a new villain named Bane who's terrorizing Gotham and trying to draw him out.

(Nolan talks about the fight scene between Batman and Bane here. And from the trailer it's obvious that Bane actually BEATS Batman in their first encounter. He calls him "Mr. Wayne" and walks away with Batman's broken cowl. You may also notice that Bruce is walking with a cane at the 2:00 mark.)

Tom Hardy from "Inception" plays Bane. Christopher Nolan directed that movie too, and he actually brought THREE stars from "Inception" over for important roles in this one. The other two are Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Anne Hathaway plays Catwoman, and the returning cast is Christian Bale as Batman, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, Michael Caine as Alfred, and Morgan Freeman as Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox.

(--Watch all four trailers here: Trailer 1, Trailer 2, Trailer 3, Trailer 4.)

There's been some pointless "controversy" surrounding this film, including David Letterman allegedly spoiling the ending, Rush Limbaugh foolishly claiming that having a villain named Bane is actually part of the left-wing conspiracy to take a shot at Mitt Romney and his former job with Bain & Company . . .

. . . and even rumors that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing Robin, despite the fact that Nolan and Bale both swore there'd never be a Robin in this trilogy.

Aaron Eckhart is not coming back as Two-Face in this one. They crushed his survival hopes early on. And Nolan also confirmed they wouldn't plug in any unused footage of Heath Ledger as the Joker.

The fate of Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul is still unclear though. He supposedly died in the first movie, but his storyline gets some kind of closure here . . . at least in flashback as part of the League of Shadows attempting to take down Gotham.

The football scene was filmed in Pittsburgh at Heinz Stadium, and a lot of the Steelers have cameos as members of the Gotham Rogues football team, including Ben Roethlisberger, Hines Ward, Troy Polamalu, Heath Miller and Willie Colon.

Former Steelers coach Bill Cowher also returned to play their coach.

"Time" magazine has put together some Bat-trivia you might like. It includes a 15-minute video of the original 1943 Batman, video of Adam West as a spokesman for Nestle Quik, and the total number of "Holy" lines that Burt Ward used as Robin.