In Haste: The Dark Knight Rises Trailer

In light of the titanic opening weekend of The Avengers, it is a curious thing to sit back and take in the newest Batman trailer. It's unrelentingly bleak.

I love Nolan's Batman flicks for the very reason of their bleakness. Batman never faces off against fun shaped aliens from outer space. By no means! He faces off against ideologies. He's the philosophical savant of the superhero genre.

Happy to notch up my excitement for the newest embodiment of the Silent Guardian in action, I took a listen to a podcast (here), in which a handful of geeks gasm out over the trailer and various theories they have pertaining to the masterstrokes of the upcoming film.

What shook me as quite insightful, was the bittersweet pill that this group of geeks were already preparing to swallow. Director Christopher Nolan has not stymied his words when broaching the topic of this film being his last Batman epic. Nolan and Batman are to be no more after this last adventure. The Bat boys sighed knowing that in two months time their long expectation would come to a climax, and from then on they'd only have their memory of the first time.

Long have I known of such emotion. As a child, every Christmas sat in me as the same inevitable dose of reality. The day after Christmas always felt hollow. The thing I'd long waited for had come and gone. Sure, I received cool gifts, and more often than not my expectations were met or exceeded (thanks to my loving parents), but nevertheless I had to face the inevitable near-future made present, which consisted entirely of non-present-opening events. This was sad. The thrill was gone.

Today I laugh at such event driven expectation. For perhaps the first time in my life (well, I looked forward to college an awful lot --- but this is exponentially a higher experience, I think you'll agree), I'm looking forward to a gamechanger in life. This gamechanger surely starts with a Christmas-esque event, but continues until I breathe in this life no more. Marriage. Marriage to a bodacious babe. Marriage to a woman who'll become one with me, as me... crazy stuff, eh. Marriage to my second self.

I think at its core, when we anticipate singular events like the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, we are deep down pining for an event that will remain with us. We want to experience that change.

I, in the form of my bride, have that change.

I long for this change.

And then -- in or outside of time, there will be but one more change for us; one more event horizon. Jesus Christ will reign as the once and future king. He will claim His sovereignty. And for his children, there will be no bitter pills to swallow.

I begin anew on July 3rd. Long may it reign.