The new Batman movie is a very close spiritual sibling to Fred Zinneman's High Noon, both in thematic choices as well as delivery on expectations. The two films do not match up identically, mind you, but the similarities are too numerous to ignore. Those similarities are largely the reason that I enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises so much.
In The Dark Knight Rises, just as in High Noon, a big bad man (Bane) is coming to town with a plan to upset the social order. The townfolk do not believe or expect him to be the true threat that he is to their way of life. Some, who prefer anarchy and lawlessness, welcome his arrival. Noon and Knight operate at radically different levels of scale, and what the citizenry know in advance is different, but the level of complacency in feeling "safe" is the same in Noon and Rises.
Both movies feature a concussive score and sound deisgn alongside patient, measured pacing. They feel finely hand-crafted. They each have their flaws, but none are so glaring that they undermine the discipline and fidelity to the universe that we see onscreen.
The analogue hero role to High Noon's retiring lawman Marshal Kane is shared by Batman and Commissioner Gordon, both relics of an era when a stand-up man was needed, respected, and supported. In TDKR's case, Batman has been retired for 8 years1 and a fugitive, thanks to his taking the blame for Harvey Dent's murder and other killings. In High Noon, Marshal Kane is blamed for the return of "Bad" Frank Miller2, a man he drove away from town. Neither of them seems to be capable of catching a break.
Both men have many people (including a love interest and a mentor) begging them to just pick up and get outta Dodge, but neither one will abandon their principles nor the town they are sworn to protect. Batman and the Marshal are capable, but at once breakable, and far from invincible.
They both receive help from a woman with a gun at one point or another, and find themselves asking and sometimes begging for help. Regressive attitudes would have you believe that these are signs of weakness that betrays the "badassness" of the hero, but I would argue the opposite.
The thing about uncommon valor is that it comes from making choices that not every person would make, and it often comes as a result of recognizing one's imperfect humanity. Batman is not a god among men, nor superhumanly intelligent from birth. His character has always been about voracious learning and growth, and that is how he is able to overcome adversity as if he were superhuman. He continues to grow through the end of this final chapter in Nolan's take on the Batman myth. The notion that the "Legend Ends" is handled in much the same way that many self-contained storylines end, leaving open the idea that the world of Nolan's Batman existed before and persists after the three movies that the director delivered.
The overall take on Batman may not match up to one's favorite or ideal "iconic" Bat-story, but it isn't intended to, just as High Noon was not made to be just like everything that was considered to be emblematic of a great western (then or as time would go on). Characters do not behave as they are necessarily expected to act, nor do they have the same degrees of flaws or strengths that one might remember, but they do all come from the same God particles of the Nolan Bat-macrocosm.
Another reason that I so thoroughly enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises is that the script does not ascribe to driving one particular worldview, but rather, it contains a multitude of them. Nolan's Bat-finale makes the world in which Gotham exists feel fleshed out and substantive. Gotham is complex for the sake of sociological complexity, rather than to satiate the need of an auteur to cry out, "hey, look at me! Aren't I deep?!".
I have been a fan of Batman stories since I was very young. The same goes for westerns. I have read and watched everything from various era of comics to the Adam West-headlined TV series to the Tim Burton films to The Animated Series (as well as the other cartoons). I have a multitude of personal favorite characters, stories, moments, and bits of dialogue. The popular super-fan consensus may very well be that Nolan has not bowed at their altar enough, but I could care less about reverence. Too much of it is tremendously boring. I don't even mind that various bits of the classic stories have been reworked to fit within the pocket dimension that Nolan has created here. You'll know that of which I speak when you see the movie.
Nolan uses many popular elements from the grand, sprawling mythos and rejects others. He couldn't hope to please the exponential iterations of the "true" Batman fan. Most notably, he got rid of all the paranormal or superhuman bits of the Bat-universe from the beginning and focused on the humanity. That actually cuts the closest to the oldest comic source material, where Batman was not crossing over with Superman and other mega-humans every two seconds, but rather, fighting criminals without superpowers or mutations or magic.
Call me old-fashioned, but none of this bothers me, not in the least. There are plenty of versions of the Batman story told using the more fantastical side of the lore or direct adaptation of specific storylines. They have not ceased to exist, nor will they.
As much as I love more action-heavy or "traditional" westerns, that doesn't mean that a square peg like High Noon should have been reshaped to fit into a round hole. Similarly, I applaud Christopher Nolan and his masterful team for giving us a true-to-itself Batman story, rather than bending over backward to give us the one they thought we wanted. What they've ended up with is a monumental multi-part saga that is consistently true to the source material while at once vivid, relevant, and nuanced, with the potential of drawing new fans into the fold.
1. People complaining that "Batman doesn't quit" must also completely reject The Dark Knight Returns' take on the character, along with any other time Bruce Wayne has taken an extended break from the cowl.
2. Oddly (and coincidentally), the same name as the author of the iconic Dark Knight Returns.