By Zanub Saeed
As the world anticipates Friday's release of "The Dark Knight Rises," the cast of the series reflected on their work in the saga, and star Christian Bale became nearly nostalgic about his time playing the caped crusader for Christopher Nolan's "Batman" trilogy.
Bale's Batman will face new adversaries this time, including the masked Bane, portrayed by Tom Hardy, and Anne Hathaway, who won the coveted role of Catwoman and her alter-ego, Selina Kyle. Batman in the series already faced his arch-enemy in the second installment of the series, 2008's "The Dark Knight," when he went head-to-head with the Joker, played by the late and Oscar-winning actor Heath Ledger. And now the saga has completed, though no word yet on what became of Batman in the last of the trilogy.
"I'm real proud of having achieved what we had set out to do," Bale told reporters at a news conference promoting the film, noted Reuters. "It was a very important moment for me. It was an important character. It's the only time I've ever played a character three times in a row and the movies themselves have changed my life and changed my career."
Bale reminisced about the last day of shooting "The Dark Knight Rises," and his final days as being Batman and Bruce Wayne.
"I just went down and sat in a room and realized this is it," said Bale of the time the cameras stopped rolling, stated Reuters. "I sat in that moment with the realization that we're done."
Nolan stated that after the completion of the Batman series, he is considering taking some time away from directing and getting projects together.
"I'm going to go on a holiday and just relax and (enjoy) not knowing what I'm going to do next," he said.
"The Dark Knight Rises," starring Bale, Hardy, Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Marion Cotillard, will be in theaters and IMAX around the world starting July 20.
