BEVERLY HILLS, California – To inject The Dark Knight Rises with a thoroughly contemporary feel, Christopher Nolan and his team looked to the past.

"After the second film came out, it was before the recession and Occupy Wall Street," said the director's screenwriting brother Jonathan Nolan, explaining the themes of economic disruption that run through their final Batman movie. "Rather than being influenced by that, we looked at old books and movies, and at some point I found A Tale of Two Cities to be captivating."

The Nolans and members of The Dark Knight Rises' cast gathered here Sunday to discuss the making of the final film in their Batman trilogy. With Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan and his team set a new gold standard for superhero movies. Their latest picture cranks up the stakes with hellacious action sequences and deep character arcs that unify the entire Bruce Wayne/Batman saga with a richly satisfying payoff.

>"The other movies keep threatening to turn Gotham City inside out so it collapses on itself, but they never really achieved that."

The two-hour, 41-minute finale serves as apt closure for the dark myth crafted for this 21st-century vision of the DC Comics hero. "The other movies keep threatening to turn Gotham City inside out so it collapses on itself, but they never really achieved that," Jonathan Nolan said. "A Tale of Two Cities was the most harrowing portrait of a relatable, recognizable civilization falling to pieces."

In Charles Dickens' novel, Paris is a city overrun with bloody chaos during the French Revolution. That literary vision helped inspire the atmosphere surrounding Batman's confrontation with evil Bane in Gotham City, which has gone eight years without its Caped Crusader when The Dark Knight Rises begins. "Paris, during that period – it's hard to imagine things going that terribly wrong," Jonathan Nolan said. "That became a great inspiration for The Dark Knight Rises."

Generating a story with genuine substance proved to be a tall challenge after the massive success of 2008's The Dark Knight, director Nolan said. "Most of the pressure you get from a sequel is to give audiences a reason to come back," he said. "At the early script stage, we felt a lot of pressure: 'OK, why would we do this? Do we have a story to tell?' Once we knew we had a story where we really wanted to know what happened to Bruce Wayne next and where his story was going to go, then you get on track."

Anne Hathaway energetically breaks type as Selina Kyle, a glamorous, very acrobatic cat burglar with a Occupy-size chip on her shoulder. Though her character is never referred to in the film as Catwoman, the actress convinces as a leather-clad ass-kicker, thanks to an intense regimen that effected a "complete physical transformation."

"When I got the part," she said, "Chris called me into his office and said, 'OK, so you're going to do a lot fighting. When we made Inception, Joe got into really good shape. He went to the gym for months so that when we did his fight scenes, he did all his own fighting. I really liked that.' Reading between the lines, I went, 'Gotcha.' I went into the gym and came out after we wrapped. I've never done anything like that before."

The Dark Knight Rises. Images courtesy Warner Bros.

Tom Hardy, who plays the much-buzzed-about mercenary Bane with unsettling ferocity, did not appear at the press conference due to work conflicts, but Christian Bale described their fight scenes as "more than just knockdown sequences."

"Tom was obviously a formidable character and a great acting partner," Bale said. "You learn about what Batman has had to go through from the beginning of the movie to the end, you learn about Bane, and the changes that come over him. That's the thing I love about Batman: you learn something about each character throughout each fight. That's really what you're looking for. You see so many people punching each other – who cares? You're looking for, 'What are the weaknesses, strengths of each character?'"

Nolan on Imax vs. 3-D ———————

"Imax creates a much larger-than-life image, and the clarity of the image draws me into the movie," said Christopher Nolan, who noted that 3-D "actually shrinks the image."

"I like to see Batman larger than life on an enormous screen," he said.

Director Nolan, who first worked with Hardy in his cerebral action hit Inception, challenged the actor to transcend Bane's clamplike mask.

"When I called Tom I basically said, 'I've good news and bad news. The good news: I've got a terrific character for you. The bad news: Your face is going to be covered the entire film, so you'll have to get everything across with just your eyes and voice.'"

Hardy shocked Nolan with his interpretation of the character. "The first time I saw Tom perform a scene with Christian, I'd never seen anything like it before," Christopher Nolan said. "There's an incredible discrepancy between his eyes, which have this very still quality, and his voice. It was a total characterization."

Michael Caine plays Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, a recurring character that functions as the moral conscience of Nolan's Batman trilogy, and in the finale, he assumes pivotal importance in his "advisory" role. The veteran actor's account of his first Batman encounter helps explain why Nolan's superhero franchise has consistently attracted serious acting talent that might not normally deign to appear in comic book movies.

"On a Sunday morning nine years ago I hear a knock on the door and there's Chris was standing there," Caine says. "I knew him from Memento and Insomnia and thought, 'Oh, he's got a lovely little thriller.' So he came in and I said, 'What's the name of the movie?'"

"Batman Begins."

"I thought, 'I'm too old to play Batman, I wonder who he wants me to be?' I knew it wasn't Catwoman. He said, 'The butler.' I didn't know if I wanted to be saying, 'Dinner is served. Would you like another bowl of soup?' He gave me the script and said, 'I want you to read it now.' He had a cup of tea and I read the script. I was stunned by the writing. It wasn't just a cipher character that you get in these big special effect movies. These were real characters."

The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.