Drew Turney Versus "The Dark Knight Rises" Prologue

Chris Nolan loves big. He wants to make big movies and he wants you to see them on big screens. So much so that he premiered the opening seven minutes of the his final Batman film The Dark Knight Rises to a gathering of movie reporters and Warner Bros brass on Thursday night in Hollywood, hoping the word would get out to see the film on an IMAX screen come the July 2012 release.

Nolan introduced the clip by telling the gathering the film might have up to 40 or 50 minutes of 65mm IMAX footage, calling the format 'far and away the best film format ever invented.

It's something of a relief to seasoned filmgoers that Nolan didn't cave to the almost-inevitable pressure from the studio to release the film in 3D, and the clip that followed his introduction showed how the screen size of an IMAX theatre can provide an experience just as awesome in scope and immersive as 3D.

Featuring a mid-air heist involving two planes and a lot of cables, the scope of the final result was an audacious as the stunt on screen, which also introduces audiences to our first glimpse of villain Bane in action. British actor Tom Hardy is full of violent, menacing energy behind the mask but the only question mark remains over whether the clip contained the final sound mix of his voice, very hard to make out at times over the action going on around him.

But the shot of a plane skirting a mountain range reminded everyone one why some movies were made for the cinema rather than the TV or laptop screen and it appears Nolan has succeeded in making something he said takes him back to how he was a child seeing larger than life images at the movies.

Though he's barely started editing the whole film, July can't come quick enough if Thursday's clip is anything to go by.