Finally saw it last night, so now I can come in here and discuss.
Very big and exciting, and Anne Hathaway may have been the best surprise; we have Selina Kyle as she is represented in the comics at last. I recognize story points from The Dark Knight Returns, No Man's Land, The Cult, sprinkled in here to compliment the classic Bane arc.
And yet...of the three films, it feels like Number 3 to me. More intellectually satisfying than emotional.
I won't get into the whole raging debate of Bruce's retirement, how long it's lasted and how he's been moping around the house in depression. I accept that for the Dent bill to have stuck - to keep the huge number of criminals in jail - he had to stop; perhaps not right away, but he came to believe he did. I take the opposite view that he had to keep going to stop the crazies like Joker that were rising up to challenge him; they took the direction that was seen in publications like The Dark Knight Returns, that perhaps the crazies come up because he is there, escalating things. So that's another reason.
However, [Spoilers ahead]
(1) Anyone think it was strange that Alfred would abandon him like that, in a bid to get him to not come back as Batman? It means he's missing from the end of the first act to the closing scenes.
(2) How much dialogue did people not make out because of Bane's mask, or because of the overwhelming music? I wonder if people got the reasons why Bane wears the mask, who gave it to him and what kind of gas he is inhaling.
(3) Everything is built to be this huge collision of wills between Bane & Batman - only for one climatic twist too many, as Miranda Tate is in fact Talia Al Ghul (as was earlier speculated) and is the true mastermind of it all, with Bane really being just an enforcer. Feels like he & the whole showdown between him & Batman got cheapened as a result. Then he goes out in an unexpected way, like that...
It's pretty great, but not the bullseye The Dark Knight was, or Avengers this year. I came out of that one in May on fire with energy; this one, I shrugged and left the theatre.