All I want to do is talk about the movie itself but in the wake of Aurora I feel like a heel for wanting to do so.

In a moment where the mountain came to me instead of me coming to the mountain, I decided that’s what he wanted, his time of glory, so people would not focus on a fine ending to a fine trilogy, but dwell on him and for that I despise him.

Like the man who killed John Lennon, I refuse to speak his name because what he did was only call attention to himself.

The moment should be there were 70 people like myself, huge fans of the work of Christopher Nolan. Nolan made the best Dark Knight series since Tim Burton made the first one so many years ago and actually makes Burton’s work seem childish.

These were people who only wanted to be the first to see this summer blockbuster and he only wanted to be a footnote in history.

What he did was deprive them of the opportunity and himself of the opportunity to be a free man for the rest of his life should he be found guilty, which I’m sure he will be and I hope he is.

Since the beginning of the Christopher Nolan series I have always watched it on debut day, impressed with the casting, impressed with the story, impressed with the way the movie was filmed.

Christian Bale, one of my favorite actors since watching him in American Psycho, was a fine choice as Bruce Wayne/Batman for his work ethic. Anyone who has seen Bale in The Machinist knows what I’m talking about, the preparation he puts into his work reminds me of the preparation DeNiro put into Raging Bull.

I was ready to see the film Friday, a little saddened this would be the last with Nolan’s imprint on it, but excited still to say goodbye to a fine series.

That would not be the case after I read the news Friday morning. I decided to wait, out of respect for the dead and probably a little fearful of copycats.

It gnawed at me some Friday and again on Saturday. Finally on Sunday it became a matter of going to see one of my favorite film series over letting him win.

While I could have watched this in Roanoke Rapids, I needed a road trip and some time on Highway 301 to map out in my mind a series I want to do.

I arrived in Rocky Mount ahead of time and sat in my car for 30 minutes just thinking, playing out scenes in my mind, most notably that I had let no one know where I was going.

Once inside the theater I looked around for signs of oddballs and saw none. The folks in Aurora probably didn’t do this and had no idea this would be their fate.

When the movie finally started my uneasiness went away and for nearly three hours I was lost in Gotham City as a Batman who took the fall for the death of the district attorney in the last movie came back to fight the evil Bane and earn back his title as a silent guardian of the city.

While there were holes in the movie, overall it was a fine way for Nolan to end his work on the series.

The biggest thing that bothered me was there were people in Colorado who didn’t get to enjoy what I saw and maybe their wish was not for people to stay away from the theaters, but to go because, as fans of the series, they were there to share the experience.

What was a great movie, however, has now been lost in a sea of rhetoric about what to do about guns when nothing can really be done about legally purchased weapons without stepping on the Constitution.

And, unfortunately, a person who cared only for himself and his own place in history tainted this movie. More importantly, he took the lives of innocent people who, like myself, only wanted to enjoy this film — Lance Martin