"The Dark Knight Rises" Leaks Online Trailer

A teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises was leaked online earlier today, but has already disappeared from the Internet. The video, which appeared to have been shot by a moviegoer, provided the 1st shaky glimpse of the final installment in Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise, due out next summer.

And although Warner Bros. has been asking bloggers to take the video offline, the trailer is already generating hype for a movie that’s been teasing fans and planting cryptic clues for months. Despite the video’s evaporation, there’s still plenty of available material for fan boys and girls to pore over in their search for plot clues. Impatient viewers might start with this blog entry on Collider.com, which details a message sent by a fan claiming to have seen the trailer. We watched the illicit clip before it was yanked, and many of the writer’s details match up with what we remember seeing:

There’s footage from the previous two installments in the Nolan franchise, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. These include an epic shot of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) trekking through the mountains where he eventually meets Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson), his teacher turned nemesis.

Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) is confined to a hospital bed, lying on his side and speaking through a breathing mask. The Collider viewer transcribed Gordon’s words thusly: “We were in this together,” he says. “Then you were gone. … Now this evil rises. The Batman … has to come back.”

Christian Bale’s voice is then heard saying, “What if he does not exist anymore?”

We also see some buildings crumble, which fits with the film poster released earlier this week at DarkKnightRises.com

We see flashes of Bane, the new installment’s hotly anticipated villain.

>> Take all these clues meager as they are with a grain of salt. After all, this is not the first alleged trailer for the film to be leaked. Weeks ago, people were debating the authenticity of a teaser rumored to be showing before screenings of Green Lantern. (Meanwhile, in May, there were similar arguments about a trailer for David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)

Those desperate to see the clip on the big screen will likely have to wait until Warner Bros. releases it on YouTube. Or, they can shell out the money to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II starting tomorrow—the Dark Knight Rises teaser will likely precede the film.