'Dark Knight' Prologue: Explaining Bane's Rising Fire

So you saw the prologue for "The Dark Knight Rising"! It looks great, and Nolan may be able to surprise everyone yet again. But... what the hell happened?

The first six minutes of the movie jump straight into the thick of the plot, unforgiving of those who might have been snoozing at any point. It seems like Nolan has a lot of story to tell, and he's got a limited amount of time to tell it. But it really doesn't help that Bane is almost unintelligible.

We've watched the prologue a couple times now, and we think we have a pretty good idea of just about everything that goes down. Here is our take on everything that happens in the "Dark Knight Rises" prologue. Spoilers ahead for those who haven't seen the prologue yet.

» A group of soldiers delivers the missing Dr. Pavel and three of the men trailing him to the CIA. The leader of the soldiers explains that the men work for Bane.

» Intrigued by the prospect of learning more about Bane, the head CIA agent takes the three mercenaries aboard his small jet, explaining that whoever talks the most about Bane gets to live.

» Bane reveals himself with his first line "Or perhaps he's wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane."

» The CIA agent and Bane have a brief exchange about the villain's background, in which we learn that the mask relieves Bane from a large amount of pain.

» A much larger plane overtakes the smaller one containing the main characters, and Bane informs the CIA that his plan was to get caught. Pavel was set to work for Bane, but the physicist "rejected [Bane's] offer in favor of [the CIA's]." Bane and his team needed to learn what Pavel said about them.

» The strike team from above connects the two planes by a series of cables, and the larger plane drags the smaller one into a suspended nose dive. There is a brief skirmish inside.

» Bane's men lower a corpse into the plane to take the place of Dr. Pavel and stage the scientist's death. One of the mercenaries must stay behind to maintain a consistent number of bodies.

» Bane releases the cables after securing a line to himself and Pavel, and the damaged fuselage crashes to the ground. Bane reassures Pavel by saying, "Calm down, doctor. Now is not the time for fear. That comes later."

Get more "Dark Knight" discussion in the latest episode of Talk Nerdy to Me!

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