Shah Rukh Khan wants to get married to Batman and the Patna residents, too, have fallen in love with the brooding, vengeful crusader with the jet-black cape (that also turns into a hand glider).

Describing his infatuation with the vigilante of Gotham, Khan had gushed: “I love Batman. Batman is so cool…” On Friday, fans of Bruce Wayne’s alter ego got a taste of the swashbuckling cool quotient in the state capital as The Dark Knight Rises hit the silver screens.

The final installment of Christopher Nolan-directed operatic trilogy, the action film brings the superhero face-to-face with yet another evil adversary, Bane, who is bent on blowing up Gotham with a nuclear device. While Batman aficionados all over the world got ready for the epic conflict (with the palpating background of drums), fans in Patna, too, went the distance to be a part of the experience. Some queued up for hours in front of the box office, others fought with parents to catch the shows. A few even bunked classes at their college.

Sumit Kumar, 23, who had come to see a show at Regent, told The Telegraph: “My friend and I bunked classes to see the film. It was a wonderful experience.”

The student of AN College added: “My favourite character in the film is Bane (Tom Hardy), who has a brilliant body and voice. Batman is also cool but the villain seems to take over the movie at times. I am not an expert but I think Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is better than Heath Ledger as Joker in The Dark Knight.”

Ledger’s portrayal of the irrational evildoer in the prequel has of course become iconic, winning him a posthumous Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Sumit and others like him would agree that hardy has done an amazing job.

Others were more impressed with the film. “Christopher Nolan (the director) had preserved his best for the Batman film. Most sequels are boring and look repetitive with similar style of action and thriller. But this one is awesome,” said Shashak Kumar, 21, a student of Commerce College, who had come to Regent to catch a show.

Superhero films are usually crowd pullers but Nolan’s Batman series is not your usual good-versus-evil affair. It is a deep meditation on the nebulous distinctions between the neat categorisation of good and evil in our times, with a protagonist who is at times a feared and despised vigilante and at others a revered hero.

The story begins eight years after The Dark Knight ended with the death of Harvey Dent. Batman has taken the blame for the murder of the district attorney and activist and turned into a recluse, mourning for the death of the woman that both of them loved. Life in Gotham City is peaceful and Bruce Wayne is content with playing cat and mouse games with beautiful Seline Kyle (Anne Hathaway). Then comes Bane, the rabble-rousing villain, and turns everything on its head, violently. The Dark Knight — Batman — must rise to protect Gotham.

The dark themes notwithstanding, the blockbuster is attracting enough crowds to make the cinema owners go laughing all the way to the bank. “We are running seven shows at present but could increase the number as there is huge demand. The two English shows were houseful today (Friday) and 80 per cent tickets have been booked in advance for the weekend,” said Cinepolis manager Abhishek Ranjan.