What should we expect from the Dark Knight Rises?

In a press release on Thursday from Dark Knight and Inception director Christopher Nolan, he revealed that Inception star Tom Hardy will play the villain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, which is set to be the third and final film in Nolan's caped crusader trilogy. He also noted in the press release that upcoming Oscar host and star of "Love and Other Drugs" Anne Hathaway will play Selena Kyle, otherwise known to Batman fanatics as Catwoman. However, nowhere in the press release does Nolan mention the word Catwoman or villain when referring to Kyle. So my question became, will we see Catwoman at all in the Dark Knight Rises? Or will the character of Selena Kyle just be present? We won't truly know until either the first trailer surfaces or the movie opens in July of 2012. Could Nolan be setting up Catwoman as a future villain for another director to take the series when Nolan hangs up his camera? With Christian Bale (Batman/Bruce Wayne) saying this will also be his last outing as Batman, it seems unlikely (Paging Val Kilmer or George Clooney).

Nolan has taken a realistic non Joel Schumacher approach to the Batman films. With Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson/Ken Watanbe), Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), and The Joker (Heath Ledger) all being grounded as real world characters. My guess is we will see Bane not as the lumbering, grunting, super human Bane from Schumacher's Batman & Robin, but instead the Bane from the Knightfall comics. This Bane was a brilliant military strategist who used the serum "Venom" to become stronger after a long prison stint. During this prison sentence Bane became obsessed with Batman and Gotham City. When he broke out of prison, he traveled to Gotham, and released all of Batman's enemies from Arkham Asylum. When Batman was exhausted from fighting them all, Bane found the Bat Cave, and broke Batman's back over his knee. This caused a hiatus for Bruce Wayne as Batman while some others including Robin stepped in as the Caped Crusader. While I don't see Nolan setting up a Robin promotion, I could see him using this storyline. It would give Cillian Murphy (Inception) his chance to complete the trilogy as Scarecrow and could be a fitting end to the trilogy.

-Maximus