The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan - 2012)

The theme is to be redemption; Batman's redemption primarily. After a protracted cat-and-mouse hunt of Batman, the Dark Knight still remains 'at large' in the eyes of the Mayor and many of the city officials. Gotham is at it's lowest ebb after the antics of the Joker. Gordon, now fully instilled Commissioner, is finding the job a struggle to manage and now beginning to understand the sentiments of his predecessor. But whilst Loeb turned to drink, Gordon has found solace in the arms of another woman.

Now for the villains. As of now, the idea (apparently) will be to start the story with Harvey Dent in a coma. Whether or not this would have been the story had Ledger still been alive, I cannot honestly say.
For the benefit of Gotham's citizens, he (Dent, that is) is 'waiting to die' in hospital. The eulogy shown at the end of the Dark Knight was not so much a funeral eulogy but rather to 'celebrate' and 'commiserate' a man who, whilst knocking on heaven's door, has done so much for them.
In truth, Dent does indeed begin the story in a coma, but recovers sufficiently to be transported to a secure and private wing of Arkham. Whence he is attended to by a selective number of specialists who attempt to reconstruct him psychically and mentally.
From here, the plan is to have Dent's face 'reconstructed' (I use inverted commas as to indicate that the 'reconstruction' of the face will most likely be Nolanized and so will look more like a rudimentary face transplant than anything else) and then reintroduce him into society after a 'miracle recovery' from his coma. Indeed, Dent attempts to 'go straight' as it were (his own self-REDEMPTION) but soon discovers that his scars run deeper than just his charred skin into some irrevocable duality of psyche of which no 'specialist psychiatrist' can treat, and so (in what I'm sure would be a powerful scene) proceeds to destroy his face once more (and I am told this is a nod to the Dark Knight Returns graphic novel?).

This, of course, is only one portion of Goyer's plot. In short, the third batman movie will thematically subject it's characters to a certain form of REDEMPTION, be it personal or otherwise. For Batman, it will be public redemption; for Gordon, domestic redemption; for Dent (who is not so lucky), it will be attempted personal-redemption.

As we know. Chris, Jonah and Goyer like to cram the story so there will be more to this piece than that which I have already stated and I fully expect another villain to be introduced to flesh out the intermittent Dent scenes.